*From Shadow and Dream (New Horn, 1982)
Mind Buoys
(in a season of omens)
In the faint gleam of her eyes
Is the flicker of a dying dream
What flame will revive this dream?
What buoys to anchor a mind adrift?
I
The hawker of curses crowded with the cock
at sunrise
and we rose to a rain of tobacco-tainted
tubercular spitum
We will watch then, silently watch them
Reap their garland of curses…
II
We called a war without a cause
We found the cause in the battle
When the blood of men tingled
In the glasses of deceit…
III
We sailed up a stream of sorrows
Seeking balms to soothe the sear
Of sutured minds, oils to spread
On sprained souls
IV
But why, why do you flee from our
landscape of sorrows
come, come let us build here an altar
with the blood of our living martyrs
V
Sometimes I wonder at the black
Hide
that shelters your throbbing blood
wonder at the almost inaudible tom-tom of
your heart
and dream of the untold story that agitates
bosom…
VI
Here our roads meet within the bean’s eyebrows
here the sweat and the tears are hidden
Let us plant a seed on this earth a seed
that will flower on the face of the moon
VII
The wind has learnt our song a sail
above their teargas and their bullets
above their bloodlust and their fractured minds
the cannons of our laughter are strangely singing…
VIII
If the wind is for us who can be against us?
We will watch the wine well on the lips of
maidens
Smell the rain-fragrance of their songs and our
Exulted spirits will soar above the whirlwinds of
of hate…
IX
A gleam of light touches lightly, moves, returns
Light on the first seed planted in earth
Look! this is a tendril seeking, seeking
The firm pillars of oak-minds…
X
So reach out, reach out and clasp the rainbow
Between desire and the dream, the shadow and
the tree
Reach out and clasp the sun and the rain
Our shield against the seasons.
