Seven Colours (A Poem)
Yellow,
the colour of my ancestors.
People from the north
A land of grey mists and
abandoned temples.
Brown,
the colour of my forefathers.
They made houses from the skin
of coconuts and women
from the clefts of the rocks.
Flesh,
the colour with no origin that
is my skin-
a ghost,
translucent
cellophane tape drained of
all desires, all dreams.
No name,
no flame
Green,
the sharpness of your arrows
under my skin
You
my secret fire, secret desire:
even I deny you.
You broke me apart,
the way a spirit breaks a
pearl in the center of a typhoon,
Yet there was nothing inside.
Fragile and wild,
a soldier drunk on fermented grass:
You realized your seeds
in my brook,
then abandoned me.
I have no womb,
yet I carry your children
I am your children
Black,
the darkness of my soul, a
wild river in flood
Wine seven thousand years old
My dark child, my other half
the boy from the nether world:
the land of the dead.
He reaches out with both hands,
a projection from the mirror:
I am the mirror.
White,
the colour of perfection, the
road to slavation and God
a guiding light from above
a love I do not understand.
But colourless,
this rose, seven petals
you dropped
in the ocean of my being
Colourless
as an unwashed pebble
stranded on the side of a cliff:
perfection
Colourless liquid spirit song
where all colours end.
