Nomad
I. Wayward Cycles
The sun outlasts the sunny days, to scorch the winter grass
And the grass falls like shadows down the slope
When youthful charioteers return to the Hesperus’ song.
Apollo rests his horses, but there is nothing in the sky to graze.
And the grasses unfold like wings from ashes
But slower than the phoenix’s song, they rise.
For they are servants of the seasons,
The song dictated by quick flames of purging.
The phoenix is grass, you are grass, I am grass—
Behold the grassland.
II. The Nomad’s Edict
Wander. Wander like the grooves of a dried stream
Or the patterns on the bark of a fallen tree.
Imitate the gods on their own orbits, they wander—
Wander to see, wander to sense, wander to be a nomad.
III. Rise Reverie
Nox’s breath resides, Eos opens gates
And yearns to open the lips of the Sun.
Or, one morn, to go with the rider on his chariot
And wander over thirsty Saharan dunes
And have the envious eyes of the sunflowers on her
And blaze the sky like a comet without portent.
Golden are the sands, the dew engulfing sands
That blow with the sirocco far north.
The winds wander, the sand trickles away—
Who follows where the nomads go?
But before we know it, our sand’s run out.
The rays are grass, the fires grow and shrivel.
Where have the clouds lost themselves?
IV. Into the Grasslands
Only the blindest gods do not look to the nomad
Whose distilled flesh rises and falls.
He who sleeps on dying paradises and dead birthplaces
And upon whose drying flesh the wildebeest graze
Envied by the Sun’s horses as they pass weary by.
And all flies in a bright blurry haze, unsettled.
At dawn, his bleary slits look through the yellow fields,
Tended by the antelope and their born babes,
Sentinelled by the maned sun-pretenders
And all the flies in a bright blurry haze, unsettle,
And race away as he stirs. The fire still glows,
For they took the animals and left before dawn.
V. The Matchmaker’s Abandonment
The little nomad shall not cry
Whose father, slaying a boar did die,
Whose mother, tending his wounds did fly.
No madness grips him, he shall not cry.
“Yellow, yellow, sunny beast,
Won’t you call me to your feast?
And I shall my little sister bring,”
Thus for a while he sits and sings.
A child-like smile conquers his chaste lips,
And into a pouch his quick hand dips
And with a beaded string returns,
“Sister see how the beast still burns!
We shall taste his sinew’s song tonight
And I’ll return your string all beaded white.”
Then a dawn comes rushing to his eyes.
Apollo, seeing, would realize
That she who had kept his gates,
Who for his return, patiently waits,
Has forgotten the grasshopper—
The child did see a well-picked bone
And realized the nomads had left him all alone.
VI. No Homecoming
No homecoming shall await, even the souls shall wander
For once away a wanderer cannot be stopped.
Yonder universe strayed like grass from dust
And the grass shall fall like a shadow in eve,
Only to rise next morn, like once it fell.
How many times must the nomad say, “Farewell”?
<This is a bit of myth-making on my part- twisting mythology for my own advantage. However, I wrote this quite a few months ago in a note book and so it still has that Romantic overtone that I am trying to lower. But the divisions of the poem I have made just now.>
