The Colonies   

Caittriona Reed

We go where we could never have imagined we would go. Like the Conquistadors, like slaves or refugees, like the Pilgrim Fathers, or nomads crossing the Bering Strait in the white man's story, we arrive in a New World, unaccountably-always unprepared for what we find there. We make up our maps as we go-and as often as not, the map we make up is as real a geography as the land on which we plant our feet.

1

Standing where we never were but
unhappily were made to be

Putting on unprecedented costumes, skin,
a life to fill the world. A world
already filled with prestidigitations

That the promised land became
a utopia by writ,
by someone’s
Indiscriminate evasion.

If only
it were possible
to remember
no less than
each forgotten journey
to all the promised lands,

2

What is it that seeks its own
remembrance
in my memory?

Who is she, the disappeared,

-La Desaparecida-

awakening in you, waking you?

To turn you over in your sleep.

To breathe this Caribbean Sea
paused in rapture

60 million slaughtered
in the first 90 years

paused in the blue rapture of unconcern

3

As if you could afford to leave now
with no score settled
all stones unturned.

There is a wasp on the window
sleepy in the winter sun.
I can let it out later

A phone call never returned,
tea gone cold in the cup

“My question is . . . ” she says

Then silence

4

“You have an axe in your mouth,” said the Buddha

The weight of each word presses in.

The vacuity you foist on us!
The sedation
you pass off as accomplishment!

It drives me to didactic rage.

Like the rest of us you work for the pharaoh
We all sell Coca-Cola to earn our bread,

And the Royal Wound bleeds and bleeds

5

Now the boats arrive
Now your people wade to land
dark words and unknown tools
will crucify my body

before I know it
before it is ever done

Do you want me to say I suffer?
Do you want me to say I don’t?

I relinquish no detail,
not one single thing.

The wasp washed ashore on the coral sand
The mind has no limit. The world has no end.

And what does it mean ‘a wrathful God?’
This huge raging life? is that it? The silent
owl forgiving? The marmoset forgiving? The wren
and tapir, armadillo, forgiving?
Is that it?

6

Take any path, and follow it
till every path becomes your own,
till all things are yours,
all living belovèd
till all paths take you
along the path which is yourself

7

“To your insane world, one reply. I refuse.” Marina Tsvetaeva

To your insane world, one reply. I refuse
The world rages into this; being
not this, nor that.
Not any one thing.
Not things once known before this . . .

Neti, neti. To resurrect itself in a song

“ The way you wear your hat
The way you sip your tea ”

The way wanting and knowing
find their balance

The way nothing is dull after
all these centuries . . .

“ The memory of all that
No, no they can’t take that away from me.”

8

“ We may never meet again
on the bumpy road-“

hands clasped eyes closed
breath held and freed-

“ on the bumpy road of love,”

with the typical
burgundy, cerulean, and gold
of your tropic sufficiency

islands, seas, birds, fish, bright and dying.

Remember
what dying there is to life

Always bright,
dying,
always reborn,
always

“ The way you haunt my dreams ”
“ The way you changed my life ”

The way life goes on and on

the way your shadows tease the world

the way,
the way
the way.

 

 

© Caitríona Reed December, 2000

 

Go Back