Nomadology

In the beginning, a word, move;

then a plan and then the reasons,

which I do not remember exactly.

I remember clearly only the clothes

we were given for the journey

and the last, silent meal we ate.

We left the place as lightly as we

had come, so many years before.

From a sunlit state of innocence

where white sheets were hung

to dry like clouds over paradise;

from eucalyptus-scented earth,

a red house with a yard swung

between dreaming hills, pillaged

by raccoons, framed with lilies

like trumpets of the archangels,

we moved: into history, a river

slowed by many bends, a village

of peacocks with a hundred eyes;

a low house among fields, with

an iron stove, a winter shrine;

a fireplace blackened by time,

the fragile bones of a sparrow

frozen in the shape of its flight.

When father played his trombone

in the attic, schoolchildren tittered

in the street. In the late afternoon,

the cows assembled at the gate,

witless, waiting for a farmer's son.

Home, the children conjugated

verbs, found variables and drew

diagrams of the human heart.

Evenings, the round kitchen table,

lit by a low Dutch lamp, summoned

poets, players, horsethieves, to glasses

of jenever. An incense of gossip rose

slowly, blackening the walls. Outside,

horses pawed the darkness, breathing

delicate feathers of ice. We courted

the favors of spiders, mice and moles.

Our words grew small and porous as

fossiled bones, our gestures groaned

with the cold. The will-less world of

water, wood and stone taught us when

to yield. When it came time to move

along again, we were four strangers

waving at each other, in slow motion,

across a deafening expanse of ocean.