Found Poem

In the east, the day breaks; do not
say we have started too early;
For we shall cross many hills yet
Before we grow old; here
the land is surpassing in beauty.

Mao Tse Tung 1934

I look out the bars upon the Castle

the crust caked row of age

in a corner my friendly spider

crouches for the unwary gnats

of my days.

So much there is we must atone.

There are spires of faith

in the invisible claws of spiders

in the flight and curve of gulls.

These know, I swear,

the contours of the rolling Saharas

and the destitute oceans of our history.

We sit, debating the charity of our captors.

At night lights come on

the shoreline bends into a broad bay

near the Castle

the sea is gray

Yesterday it rained on the eve

of my forty-first year

and left all my defeats intact

Let me lead you into the country

It is only as half clansman

of the ritual goat

that I bring my song to the place of sacrifice

here in the pain fields

asphalt and smoke of a large hearth

I lead

my rope is short.

I shall soon arrive under the tree.

I will stage a hundred fights in honor of our Gods

and our beloved leader

Here, I could care less for the toiling masses

I retreated here before Lent

to my own stretch of sea front

(I cannot see the damned sea

because of old caked walls

built by Dutchmen)

But the shore falls into a deep gulf

there are no cliffs.

They found a week-old baby

buried in a shallow grave

on the front lawn of the fort.

I want my grave to be deeper.

They are sawing through our firewood

Today is cassava day

The flutist is silent

Perhaps his troops have arrived in Georgia

Not to arrive upsets me

And for the path that I have trod

I have no regrets

Source: The Promise of Hope: New and Selected Poems, 1964-2013 (University of Nebraska Press, 2014)