Trumpeter (1990)
ISSN: 0832-6193
Reborn to the Living
Jim Strecker
Trumpeter
In the great Rift Valley,
this sun-parched belly of earth,
I walk into his knowledge.
I hear the sound before language,
his breath; I hear my own heart
breathe wonder. His eyes have
decomposed, become dust, and I
touch a sharp stone, an axe he made,
and I am atoms of dust and flesh,
my lifetime and a million years old.
Still I do not know what he knew,
what the heat of his brain
wanted to know when he perished
in the age of stone before time.
Then to grasslands, Masai Mara,
and thinking steals my body from flesh:
I am become my own danger. I contemplate
the giraffe, zebra, elephant, eland,
gazelle, all born of earth to die
the half-eternal lifetime of stars;
but I, born flesh of the very same
earth, am a stranger. In the wild
beast's heart the world begins, in the
wild beast's heart the world is new,
and I, man of nuclear age, idea myself
out of blood and out of wonder
into abstract of the earth.
Yet this to the sun I speak: Into you,
great flame, I bring my small fire;
into you great flame, I bring branches
of a thousand dreams. And they are
nothing to you, great sun. And I
who kill the earth am nothing, know
nothing, dream nothing. I am not
forever and you are the sun.
Then evening: the sky is heavy
with colour, darkness and blue
as one. The sun blooms twilight,
the horizon, the stars are blossoms
unending, and beast and man have
sense in senses shared. We are kin,
we are one, the tangible echo
of heaven, yet my perfection is less.
The black rhino stands, forever and
now, on the cool, dimming music
of these grasses, and I, descendant
of stone age, am made of stone.
I have read too many books; my
brain is misshapen heart. I have
stopped the seasons, made light to
stop the seasons, hacked my dreams
apart to touch their molecules. And
somewhere in my sleep I call to earth,
call to earth, my flesh, and awaken
alone. My words are merely dust
blown too far away; I do not know
myself in raindrops as they fall.
Then heal me, teach me, wildebeest;
I touch every atom of your name
and say nothing. Let my blood drink
the master design migration, and let
my steps follow you. And you, water
buffalo, teach me to stand still
and know that I am. And you, hyena,
baboon, let me know the whole world
in your senses resounding, no matter
what shadow shall speak for the end
of this mortal, mortal world.
And cheetah, impala, vulture as one,
let me know, before knowing, the wisdom
of my bones. Blast rushing stars of
wonder through my skin, and let me be
what I am, your spirit in mine,
summer in winter, fire in snow. And
above this grassy mirror to the sky,
let my heart be the sweat-scented
wind, my mind the transcendance of
the bird, my life a split second
of breathing through these lungs.
And earth, now dry where my moist
ancestors rotted, earth of each killer
and victim, my kin, I feel the waters
of your love in mine. My ancestor,
nameless, set me here, foreign to
his primal splendor; he hacked a
stone to shape my destiny. And now
I, the hunter, shall be hunted again
And my cells, like the stars, shall
be before they become. For the child,
my heart, is the light in the
darkness, where these peaceful
creatures of morning drink rainbowed
rays of the sun, more real than any
voice that names them one by one.
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