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The Granddaughter Sings Lily Home (1994)
This crossing hard. Melinda stroke the hair
still thick and streak with gold
and black and white, and smile
when Lily crease her eye. Melinda
thumb the tear that leak down whiteskin folds.
She sing a song of eye and hill and help
that come from God. The last aunt die
ten days before. Don’t tell her, it gn kill her—
but Melinda know that death don’t lie
in knowing: it in lying.
I will lift up mine eyes.
When Lily brush her hair—
that whiteman hair, her father hair—
each colour tell it tale.
From whence cometh my help.
A new tear track the first. Melinda voice, it split.
It crack. The Jordan River deep and wide.
What do Lily fear? I’ll meet my children on the other side.
This crossing hard.
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Sevenling: Life is a Drying
(after the Merina of Madagascar)
Life is a drying, a journey
from water to dust. The skin hangs,
the blood slows, flesh hardens and turns
to wire and stone. And death is a drying.
The grave leaches life’s liquids.
Flesh lets out its water, skin crisps to ashes.
We humans are nothing but gravedust and bone.
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qarrtsiluni 