What MusicI would have loved you then, in
the hot, moist tropics of your young womanhood.
Then
the stars were out and fat every night.
They remembered your name
and called to you
as you bent down in the doorways of the whiteman’s houses.
You savored each story they told you,
and remembered
the way the stars entered your blood
at birth.
Maybe it was the Christians’ language
that captured you,
or the bones that cracked in your heart each time
you missed the aboriginal music that you were.
But then,
you were the survivor of the births
of your two sons. Now they live in another language
in Los Angeles
with their wives.
And you,
the stars return every night to call you back.
They have followed your escape
from the southern hemisphere
into the north.
Their voices echo out from your blood and you drink
the Christians’ brandy and fall back into
doorways in an odd moonlight.
You sweat in the winter in the north,
and you are afraid.
sweetheart.