Esteban (3) (conclusion)
He drifts, listening to himself go on
as if in an overheard conversation,
the voices slightly muffled
by a blanket draped
across the door.
I didn’t ask for this. How
can a slave volunteer?
How can he not?
Or am I still a slave, I wonder . . .
The paper in the locket
on my breast calls me
a ward of the crown: who isn’t?
The friar is at most
my trustee. By the terms of his vow,
he can’t hold alienable property . . .
I must’ve slept. The girl’s gone,
the room a vivid red. I thought
the fact of thinking meant I was
at least conscious . . .
So now I’m awake, I’ll spend
another night with drums & songs
& calabash, deep in trance.
Released from the tyranny of thought
to clamber up & down dream-creepers,
severing the artful
tendrils of disease: a pilgrimage
as looped & convoluted
as the entrails of a sheep.
Where no haruspection could find
anything but the pit,
this blank hole in
the center of the map,
one road
unraveling
through all the poor & hungry
quarters of the earth.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Cibola 1
- Cibola 2
- Cibola 3
- Cibola 4
- Cibola 5
- Cibola 6
- Cibola 7
- Cibola 8
- Cibola 9
- Cibola 10
- Cibola 11
- Cibola 12
- Cibola 13
- Cibola 14
- Cibola 15
- Cibola 16
- Cibola 17
- Cibola 18
- Cibola 19
- Cibola 20
- Cibola 21
- Cibola 22
- Cibola 23
- Cibola 24
- Cibola 25
- Cibola 26
- Cibola 27
- Cibola 28
- Cibola 29
- Cibola 30
- Cibola 31
- Cibola 32
- Cibola 33
- Cibola 34
- Cibola 35
- Cibola 36
- Cibola 37
- Cibola 63
- Cibola 38
- Cibola 40
- Cibola 41
- Cibola 42
- Cibola 43
- Cibola 44
- Cibola 45
- Cibola 46
- Cibola 47
- Cibola 48
- Cibola 49
- Cibola 50
- Cibola 51
- Cibola 52
- Cibola 53
- Cibola 54
- Cibola 55
- Cibola 56
- Cibola 57
- Cibola 58
- Cibola 59
- Cibola 60
- Cibola 61
- Cibola 62
- Cibola 64
- Cibola 65
- Cibola 66
- Cibola 67
- Cibola 68
- Cibola 69
- Cibola 70
- Cibola 71
- Cibola 72
- Cibola 73
- Cibola 74
- Cibola 75
- Cibola 76