Inside me
is a Flores Island
woman.
In my hand,
an Achulean hand ax
can do
more than a few things.
I think in hers it could've too.
My body, like hers,
through war and childbirth,
wants to continue.
Yet, I'll bet,
she didn't know
the mosquito
still kills 10 percent
of all of us.
A leg,
submerged,
is
electrolysis,
brings fire
into water,
resets volumes,
changes molecular.
My body
longing for another time,
remembers
land under till
remembers more,
Flores cousin,
than I have words for.
It began as
lightening
up there
where it
cleared a ridge,
bridged,
flew,
until
it entered you,
coming down
into the crown
of your head,
a fire
burning
through you,
pouring
from your right arm.
The strike
erased an alphabet,
charred skin,
continued into
the earth,
coursed up through
roots
to kill a tree,
entirely
turned it to coal.
You,
the sole survivor,
were told
you stood surrounded by
a horse, a dog, a cat,
that lay on their sides,
black
as crows.
They didn't know what hit them,
where they went,
one minute aware,
another spent.
But you also
were
slate wiped, erased,
rushed away from your fields
into years
of revolutions.
If you learned something,
if you were taught
while lit
it's naught now,
never persisted.
Yet you who
existed before
also ended.
What are you now?
You see yourself
as an interstice,
through which
you
glimpse
the finite,an aftermath.
Today I made
blue books of trees
of seas.
I told stories of
26 martyrs,
lives found
around my wrist,
in a chaplet.
I'll learn to pray
as if these beads
were also swallowed by tides.
I read that where the martyrs died,
a Buddhist priest lifted one,
his Jesuit brother,
up,
as did
in another story
Simon Cyrene.
I am
straining under
patibulam rasa,
walking through a place
where I face
victims of shipwrecks,
strewn
through blue and
sand,
buried
on high ground
among capstones
and mossy crosses.
Above trout lilies
swifts
lift
risking
a kestral.
A magpie on the roof
spies kittens in a sink
that once
was a creek.
Nearby sheep sleep
in a wash
that still
occasionally
fills
with rain.
I left my body at eight. It's taken a lifetime to return to it. Yesterday, I photographed the last flower of Covid.
I witnessed a stranger die from his own anger on a Seoul street. Shielding the eyes of a child from the body, his pregnant mother asked me to check the man's face, to make sure it wasn't her husband.
his father, our father, not in heaven but on earth
even an angry man's had birth
more than a single moment here
" queen of heaven, star of the sea, pray for the children, pray for me"
qual é um bom remédio para um pesadelo?
os céus, o mar, a terra debaixo de mim?
Eu uso uma braçadeira que diz fica aqui
até ires para lá.
what is a good remedy for a nightmare?
the heavens, the sea, the earth beneath me?
I wear an armband that says stay here
until you go there.
The sound around my arms is woolly
I top terrace plants with black soil
you lost your mother
to heaven, if you believe it,
but surely earth
another conundrum? no
we make up things as we go
hope to show
how we are connected
to trout lilies and an oriole
I save appleseeds
and memories
I cannot save much else
on a daily basis, that is
prayers are always there
like cement shoes I put on
to stay aground
enquanto caminha a sorrir
sabe que
fofocar
invejar
é
esquecer perguntas
odiar alguém
não é dar poder
aprender a perdoar
ninguém está realmente no comando
do seu coração
mas tu
por isso
rir
sabe como perder
perdoar quase toda a gente
por quase tudo
livrar-se do que não é utilizado
depois
enquanto caminha
sorrir
desfaz o teu
boné
atira-o para o ar
_________________________________
as you walk along smiling
you know that
gossip
envy
is
to forget questions
to hate someone
is not to give power
learning to forgive
no one is really in charge
of your heart
but you
so
laugh
know how to lose
forgive almost everyone
for almost everything
getting rid of what is not used
then
as you walk
smile
undo your
cap
throw it in the air