Sub silentio
I
Noon. Within the reaches of a highway signposts turn to me and point: "Regard a century that stumbles into a present fooled by toady goons." Thus farmers live in glitzy towns, prefer the screech of motorbikes and blindaged 4 x 4's that hit the road to Buenos Aires in a day. Propelled through hostile plains men at the wheel feel safer, mobile phones in hand, chattering about some future gains. I hear a signpost say: "Upstarts profess to anoint this land with techno mimicking progress."
II
Another post, bent by unstilled winds, waves its deprecated desert cap and spits from lipless mouth: "See the locks for water storage regulate uncanny mirrors of the sky, see the sky squeezed into a mirage of silent apathy, hear its death rattle ... rattle rattle rattle see it hide its face in the confines of foreclosed space."
III
Then I perceive shy water-sprites take leave of springs reduced to runlets, of dried-up fountains, of magic, I hear wood nymphs fret by torrents subdued in concrete flanks, sources of power for the metropolis agonizing on mudbanks of a lion's mouth to the Atlantic. I smell the mouth of the lion redolent with litter, I see it coughing under the skyline of a city eaten smooth, timeserving, one that never understood the poetry of water nor rock nor blue lagoon.
IV
Oh, if I could swim beneath the mirrors that entombed those plains 'midst rolling hills, my tears would pierce the casements of underwater museums, I'd say farewell to ritual glades, to chthonian shrines and graveyards, to adobe homes 'neath shrouds of algae, the kind that chokes fresh forms of life. I'd pay homage to the a๋rial spirits my sentiment revisits, murmur lunar incantations of a culture scythed to its roots by improbity blinking cold eyes over the blood monies of nations.
IV
And then the spreading of the shadows. Sub silentio. On a solitary signpost, near death of day, a songbird stares, too weak to warble, and the fair child has long gone away.
From "Patagonia Lost", unedited collection.
Copyright Sylvia Maclagan, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2004.
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Mis temas favoritos The Lord replied, my precious, precious child, I love you and I would never leave you. During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.
"There is no life higher than the grasstops Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind Pours by like destiny, bending Everything in one direction."
Sylvia Plath, Crossing the Water, Wuthering Heights. Nominate a poem for the InterBoard Poetry Competition by taking into careful consideration those poems you feel would best represent Mosaic Musings. For details, click into the IBPC nomination forum. Did that poem just captivate you? Nominate it for the Faery award today! If perfection of form allured your muse, propose the Crown Jewels award. For more information, click here!MM Award Winner
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