I wake not knowing where I am.
Outside it is raining through sunshine,
a fine mist lit by a crack in the clouds.
A black butterfly with white full moons on his wings
weaves his way through the trees.
Even now there are spirit huts,
small offerings to homeless Gods,
a sense there was someone here before.

An awareness of loss, it aches in the wood,
as the toads sing their love songs,
and the geckos go crazy for lightning.
The sky unpeeled, a flash of other maps,
here there are dragons, the edge of the world,
creatures not yet discovered.

We have to earn back our sense of wonder,
the buried treasure of all that we do not know
and cannot know. The lines we drew have ripped myths apart,
whole peoples carved in two, a cut that will not close,
the logic of blood, the great crusade.
There's nothing more dangerous
than men who think they invented the compass.

The trees have their own seasons,
they read the sky and follow different stars.
In this country, I am illiterate.
The letters will not surrender their meanings,
why should they? I have not even learnt my own language,
never mind theirs. My tongue is foreign in my mouth,
so much endless paper, whole forests of lies.
The words come pre-packaged, easy to digest,
quotations from the television. Even the rain has more to say,
it sighs under the weight of the leaves, its thunder is a warning.

I want to return to the roots of vowels,
the truth of the songs we have forgotten.
In the bones of the ocean,
there is an ancient gramophone
and its dances of salt are always the latest fashion.
I will make my own waves, drink my own tune.

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