TE19 Iberian Adventure

Poems

If you are perplexed as I am, somewhere between the lowest laws of nature and the finest sentiments of human intent, wandering between dead ends

and the next, most urgent, unformulated question – entrain the cager to cultivate a measure of just-compassion from that same breath’s dew; let these birds fly. Save the thought-birds

between ‘you are’, ‘you are not’. Liberty oscillates, striding between human and divine. Abdicating my next step to her is one instant. She takes many steps to unveil me.

She calls me softly in my sleep, in my mother’s tongue, I’m sure her calling me is reciting. She’s reciting a new poem. Words wording in my mother’s tongue,

calling me lest I make her small in my waking and I wake, I wake up startled. She is me, I remember, not a word I remember. She is me, not a dream.

---

257