Survival in the Valley
And the thread of a constellation hidden behind a sweet morning came when my eyes were full of last night’s dream beyond the mountains, what did I see like belonging and exile?
And the thread of a constellation
hidden behind a sweet morning
came when my eyes were full
of last night’s dream beyond the mountains,
what did I see like belonging and exile?
These sweet stars put me to death
between nocturnal peaks;
a corpse in liminal space.
That existence is violent like this flower
here, in my grandmother’s
rolling fields, rolling rolling fields ..
That survival bloomed like a gasp
in the shadows of these peaks
under the triple gem, under the triple gem ..
The undying have liberated me,
undeserving— like an apricot bloom
that asked me to find its first petal ..
I’ve stumbled on yesterday
where at the foot of this mountain
I was born in a cradle of stones,
I’ve died so crisply
at the peak of this exile
on a bed of glacial non-belonging,
here I live for ever more
with every gentle stream, every gentle scream
I, every shade of sacred green,
here, survival
sounds like thunder
and tastes like butter
and looks like
my grandmother
as she counts zodiacs,
she, who stretched from sunburnt earth,
to become this dream I had
of a thousand constellations.