a mamaist citizenship

        



        I live in a country of darkness.
        Dark eyes, dark hair, the darkness
        of a garden's shade. I'm surrounded
        on all sides by water, where the dead
        keep rising at their own leisure
        as I listen, though I'm not sure
        (how can I be?) what it is exactly they're
        trying to say to me, and where
        the living go in search of 
        adventure, the unsurpassing love
        that seas only can bestow
        on whomever would dare to go
        into (especially) those deep
        places, that can cause such sorrow
        at the awful losses, and make one weep.
        This country where I live I barely know.

        Inching my way, in meters
        now, in a land where the air
        all around, in spring, is full of flowers
        and edible fruits, which for all Demeter's
        splendid beauty and powers,
        cannot, once eaten, unensnare
        the eater, who would be tantalized
        by what in days past was prized
        for being unattainable,
        before it was spread on the table
        uncooked, like raw fish popular
        among my fellow citizens, that blur
        of so many faces until I am able
        to face myself, alone, in the mirror
        again, and see, no, not in horror
        but in thanks, the twin, the double
        that, no matter where or how far
        I stray, is always home, a star
        in the distant field of my childhood wanderings,
        where the boy lying on his side sings
        a tune, or whistles the time away,
        in a country where he did, and did not, stay.




Botsford, Alan. mamaist: learning a new language. Kamakura, Japan, Minato No Hito, 2002.