How this empire will lie when
in a century or so
it laughs its last choking joke
and flies farther than angels ken.
The waves of both maria,
maria vestra, not mine,
bring sad legs to these templa,
shrines of strange gods with pretty shine.
Their tired missionaries
take the gospel of self to
other shores. After one, two
years, they take off, leaving us to ourselves.
In this particular mound
of brown and black, I wander
lone, and not one spoken sound,
one whiff of skin, is tender
strange, without being familiar.
How does one live the life
of self in a community of selves?
It is a severed life
in the land which these people delved,
in temples like these—convenient lives.
I realize in writing this
I am angry. I want in.
There is tension
in being intentional
against other good news.
(And you, reader, see
my fingers in their
natural state.)
How does one be in but
not of this religious
swimming pool of all worlds?
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