ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explores the meaning of language and poetic aesthetics in particular within a context where the past is burdened with terrible memories, and where the social fabric is fractured by jealousy, hatred and crime. The author show how the figure of the ‘healer’ in popular consciousness reappears as the figure of the third within poetic writing: the imagined other through whom inner truth can be expressed. The Rwandan psychologist Deogratias Bagilishya argues that in Rwanda, proverbs are frequently used strategies when coping with loss and pain. The story of Charles takes us to the more rural context of Nyamata, a small town in the district of Bugesera near the border with Burundi. In Rwanda today, poetry can contribute to the re-creation of the individual in pain who continues to suffer in the aftermath of the genocide or because they are a victim of harmful actions in the present.
