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| MIKAEL DE LARA CO |
| Archipelago |
| THE AUTHOR HOLDS THE COPYRIGHT TO THIS POEM. THIS IS POSTED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR. |
| THIS IS PART OF THE LITERATURA READING SERIES | CLICK HERE TO GO BACK TO LITERATURA |
| 1. The horizon, my ancestors say, is an eye. When it shuts its lashes sift the sea for rafts and turn fishermen and divers to stone, their hands still clenched around pearls, their blood turning crystalline and cold. The gods were in love with the horizon. They hung their jewels on the night-sky and ebbed into the eye while my people stared at the orphaned trinkets. The priestesses rummaged through their rucksacks. They rubbed twigs and killed goats. They chanted and chanted until their voices felled the trees. The gods have vanished. The storms and smog have snatched their jewels from the sky. When the skies cleared, we saw a sun not even ours. 2. The horizon is a lover of light. Look: The galleons came and went and none were turned to stone. 3. Ours is a history of consequences. He who fails to look back. And what is there to look forward to? What is left but light? He who runs fast. When the galleons came, no one ran. We bartered our tongues for something to chew on, our hands for a fistful of sand. The priestesses rummaged through their rucksacks. What is left but light? A stray grain of rice, the hard shell of a crab, a leaf. An infinite shoreline pining for the bare feet of its vanished gods. A few stars long gone, their carcasses floating in the night sky, beneath them the horizon, wide like an eye, its hungry iris luring the forgetful. 4. What is left but light? In the mountains my people dance around bonfires and pour the blood of birds unto the parched soil. In the cities they huddle to tell stories: My throat burns with the echoes of ancient curses. My fingertips have forgotten the texture of sand. Fireflies gather around lampposts, their tails having already forgotten luminiscence, their hearts valuing memory over flight. Once I closed my eyes and imagined the horizon. Instead I saw driftwood and the barren bodies of oysters. Instead I saw a history that has turned to stone. 5. THE HORIZON, LOVER OF LIGHT: Your gods no longer wish to return. PRIESTESSES RUMMAGING THROUGH THEIR RUCKSACKS: Carcass of a whale. Coins and crushed coral. Wet maps. THE HORIZON, LOVER OF LIGHT: You have looked at the skies and seen only shadows. You have pressed your ears to a seashell and heard nothing but dust settling on scorched earth. PRIESTESSES RUMMAGING THROUGH THEIR RUCKSACKS: Slingshots. Many-titted statues. A stone. THE HORIZON, LOVER OF LIGHT: You have forgotten. PRIESTESSES RUMMAGING THROUGH THEIR RUCKSACKS: But what is left to remember? 6. May the horizon grant us salt. May it pry our pearls from the fists of pirates. May it blink and turn our enemies to stone and forgive us our dreams of light. 7. Stars remind us of our forgetfulness. As do shorelines, infinities of sand and jagged stone shifting like memory. Here a story about blood. Here, the quiet resonance of a riddle: two black balls. A well full of swords. Here a song about the horizon. Here, a poem about light. This poem is part of the collection that won First Prize for Poetry in the 2007 Palanca Awards |