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fisher communities
|
have suffered in time
|
and what’s happened
|
now is just another feast
|
for that bloody,
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sleeping mother
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lapping at our island;
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but what if the ocean
|
were innocent,
|
the tectonic plates
|
innocent, what if God
|
were innocent?
|
I do not know
|
how to walk upon the beach,
|
how to lift corpse
|
after corpse
|
until I am exhausted,
|
how to stop the tears
|
when half my face
|
has been rubbed out
|
beyond
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the railroad tracks
|
and this anaesthetic,
|
this calypso come
|
to the last verse.
|
What shall we write
|
in the sand?
|
Where are gravestones
|
incinerated? Whose
|
ashes are these urned
|
and floating through a house
|
throttled by water?
|
Shall we build
|
a memorial
|
some calculated distance
|
from the sea, in a park,
|
in the shape of a giant wave
|
where we can write
|
the names of the dead?
|
Has the wave lost
|
its beauty? Is it now
|
considered obscene?
|
Yet tomorrow
|
we must go to the ocean
|
and refresh ourselves
|
in the sea breeze
|
down in Hikkaduwa
|
where it is raining
|
in sunny Ceylon.
|
Tomorrow, we must
|
renew our vows
|
at sunrise, at sunset.
|
Let us say the next time
|
the ocean recedes
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and parrots gawk
|
and flee, and restless
|
dogs insist their humans
|
wake up, we will not peer
|
at the revelation
|
of the ocean bed,
|
nor seek photographs.
|
We will run to higher ground,
|
and gathered there
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with our children,
|
our cats, dogs,
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pigs, with what we’ve
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carried in our hands
|
—albums, letters—
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we will make a circle,
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kneel, sit,
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stand in no particular
|
direction, pray
|
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