The Butterfly Garment
For Nuu’ha’ghu of Titan and the people of Africa
Ennedi
For the people of Chad and Stephen J. Gould
Courting the ropes of heaven
and etching the palimpsest of Ennedi
you tumble breathless through the veil
of God’s rectory and time stamp
into the oval’s dust and heat
and exultation of flight renewed.
Descend and breath, old sister,
in the central sun of a living reserve.
Ennedi’s snake-shrunk caves
and the rustling antelope bribes
of real archea and glottal hymns
of the old shore of Mo’ab and Mithrim.
Fada and Guelta, and then Nakh’iri
with her sudden laughter and explanations.
Call down the once and future whirlwind
and scatter great beetles onto baked stone.
We will win. We will win the war for flowing water
against nothingness and sand.
—
Gombe
For the people of Tanzania and Jane Goodall
Fly down swiftly now east of the heavy Congo canopy
of jungle and mining dust to that old green carpet
of the raiding party and infant killers
yet also the bursting symposium
of element awe and thunderstorms.
Watch the ecstatic hunt and hunger of the growing brain
drumming the bone drum in a plaintive call
of stalking polio and surviving animal:
“Where has my brother gone? Why are our branches empty?”
Towns of stone and prison islands
rise out of the blue-white and call the fresh rains
off the Serengeti to God’s great conveyor
of solvent and salt and sunrise.
Galloping and galloping and galloping
the wildebeest turn and curl and lock horns
in the death grip of the greenwayi and themeda.
Pulse and fly through the arteries
of the great giraffe bringing life and eyes and hunger
to the leaf cover of the sun and the primary.
—
Okavango
For the people of Botswana and Stephen Baxter
In the highlands flood and retreat
the long dancing partners name and rename themselves:
Kalahari and Okavango embracing
like steel hands in velvet gloves
or equatorial shrikes in calming Botswana blue.
Notre Dame est let ciel blanc.
Notre Pere est les arbres bleu.
Notre Dieu est singulaire.
Take the trowel and pen and sketch
the snake hands and elephant bones.
There will be digs and digs and digs.
Old touch point rooftops beneath sediment
with the first careful fires and tables
for the sedentary carvings and villages of the San.
We call you down for the system’s oldest memories.
Some other sun’s ecliptic and the long weary floors
of cenotaphs on empty moons
and the silver dance of lovers
in the long, last light of Saturn’s lamps.
—
Elmina
For the people of Ghana and Isaac Asimov
To see what they saw on shore — the weary forearms and gaping mouths
of the slave galleys plunging and disappearing.
“They are gone, they are gone,”
rising like an angry whisper and growing
into its own source of vindication
and pushing back into the humid interior
to topple the entitled men they elected kings.
And the oblivious sycophants and money men themselves
hoisting their flags of convenience
for a middle passage of rape and fear
and gnawed spines in the white dark hunger
of the bellies of the death ships.
“Where are our voodoo gods? Where are the weather women to stop this?”
Old sister, take that sandstone map-making
and the etchings of wrath at Elmina:
our One God gathering the souls of the hungry
for the red dawn of memory’s morning.
—
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Mji wa Rasi
For Nelson Mandela and the people of South Africa
The muddy swirl off Cape Town surges low
to the eastern brown and dark to the Atlantic tipping point.
There are floes and floes and floes.
Penguins in their dumb group solitude
peek and dive and swim away.
There are stations and kayaks and humans already
claiming the southern ocean for ore pits
rather than dropping in thanks to God
for the mystery of the hundred words for ice.
Sunrise before Solaris is one eyelid in time
like a great pearl with an iris forming
the memory of some new blue sun.
The Moon Knights will always land
with their careful staves and cloaks.
“Give Mandela back his tears
and the youngsters back their bread.”
We will have rivers and white and kindness
and shining gemstones in the night.
—
Ge’ez
For the Velvet Underground and the people of Ethiopia
Let us go then for the last dive to the east
and the darkling thrush of the demons rising
up the last cataracts
and the sudden burst of the seraphim and shrikes
clutching olive branches to defeat them.
Ge’ez and the thousand colours made of tears
for the first covers of the first gospels
whispered and then written and then hidden
in the heart of Ethiopia’s highlands.
Wherefore this war, my God?
How long the churning and darkness
of the old river of the pharaohs?
We see the whip and love not given lightly.
Who must die these thousand years?
And who join the light of resurrection?
Let us have a perfect day at Danakil
with the dug out churches and chants and white robes.
Let us send our new gryphon to the deep time
of green Venus in her garments
and the gardens of heaven’s embrace.
— -
Grasshoppers at Tunis
For Abdulroaf Morgan and the Khalid Redouane
- Old friends from Abu Dhabi
A fistful of Roman salt and the blue dust of oblivion
off of Notre Mare and then they were buried.
Buried until the horseman leapt up from the mosaics:
speakers for animals with their mouths stuffed
with broken rams’ horns and the last cedars of Phoenicia.
The horsemen of the last book both birth and echo
the slam of Cato’s staff:
“Carthage must be destroyed. Carthage must be destroyed.
Fight the third war and finish them.”
Aquinas and his inkwell gathered the threads of Arius and Nicaea:
“Come and look at the old city broken.
Take them the words from Nazareth.”
And God gathered his evangelists like new acorns
and tilled the land of Tunis
with Tertullian and Cyprian and faithful Perpetua.
“Qui tente de créer le feu et les fleurs
avec les tambours de guerre, mais sans le Livre saint?”
And I heard that call and saw that flame
by the old fire pit: Jupiter rising along the ecliptic
and the sounds, the sounds, the sounds
of the grasshopper.
— -
Turkana
For Dolores O’Riordan and the people of Kenya and Mozambique
Isaiah 66:24
And if the zombie shuffle comes remember the great rift valley
cut its course through the green highlands and the rocks
from Turkana to Magadi to the last blue tears of Urema
with God’s millions of years of healing split atoms
and the waste of Garantua in its slow death.
We’re not in so deep. We’re not in so deep.
You did not fight me. You did not fight me.
The Luftwaff turned and sunk and burned
and the last hydras of the East smashed their empty minds
on the last teeth of Moher as the dreams of our children
were gathered through the voice of the Mother of Oblivion.
Come, cone and look upon the carcases of the men
that have transgressed against Her.
Their worm shall not die
and neither shall God’s fire be quenched.
Say then that if love is a temple
then family is our higher law.
Say then that if love is a temple
that you will also answer
for what you knew and failed to do.
You are everything to me.
You mean everything to me.
