to Francis de Afiomandre

She speaks with abandonment 

about her savage seas 

of mystic algae and sands.

She prays to Cod without burden or bulk. 

This woman is ancient and ready to die. 

She has made our garden otherworldly, 

cultivating cactuses and herbs 

that rustle in the wind like sails. 

She breathes the desert’s exhalation 

and has loved with a white-hot passion:

her secret, if unveiled, 

would be like the map of another star

For eighty years she will live among us, 

but it will always seem as though 

she has just arrived, 

speaking a language of shivers and groans 

that only elvish animals understand. 

And she will die surrounded by us 

during a night of supreme suffering, 

with only her destiny for a pillow:

a quiet and foreign death.

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Page last edited February 14, 2000
by: PhoneBoy