Was he looking for St. Lucia’s light to touch his face those first days in the official November snow & sleet falling on the granite pose of Lincoln? If he were searching for property lines drawn in the blood, or for a hint of resolve crisscrossing a border, maybe he’d find clues in the taste of breadfruit. I could see him stopped there squinting in crooked light, the haze of Wall Street touching clouds of double consciousness, an eye etched into a sign borrowed from Egypt. If he’s looking for tips on basketball, how to rise up & guard the hoop, he may glean a few theories about war but they aren’t in The Star-Apple Kingdom. If he wants to finally master himself, searching for clues to govern seagulls in salty air, he’ll find henchmen busy with locks & chains in a ghost schooner's nocturnal calm. He’s reading someone who won’t speak of milk & honey, but of looking ahead beyond pillars of salt raised in a dream where fat bulbs split open the earth. The spine of the manifest was broken, leaking deeds, songs & testaments. Justice stood in the shoes of mercy, & doubt was bandaged up & put to bed. Now, he looks as if he wants to eat words, their sweet, intoxicating flavor. Banana leaf & animal, being & nonbeing. In fact, craving wisdom, he bites into memory. The President of the United States of America thumbs the pages slowly, moving from reverie to reverie, learning why one envies the octopus for its ink, how a man’s skin becomes the final page.
Copyright © 2011 by Yusef Komunyakaa. Used with permission of the author.