Mar 07 2001
When I Speak Your True Names
poem by Brian Charles Clark
(for Miles and Hawthorne)
My heart wanders. I love you
more than nomads. I long for us
to enter tents, and come out
bearing wings. In our stolen lands
there is no time for singing,
and if our love for a moment
is a dune,
then are dunes vacations for Americans?
I rue and curse the day of imperialism,
and creep through Turtle Island
at night. In the tent should burn some wood.
Why did our spark
not catch flame? Were we not dry enough,
was our kindling still wet behind the ears?
Or is our culture a flashflood,
pissing on our cactus flowers?
Picked up by the wind, the sand
groans like a sitar in ecstasy.
A big dust comes up,
vision becomes historical. I see your faces
as generations of impressions,
shouting and caressing,
three are this storm we,
and we are a wind of skirt songs
and shirt tails and ours is a beautiful whine
of strong making.
You two, we know how to prove things
with our bodies. We know where the Earth is.
I sleep next to the fire.
