Cynthia Dewi Oka: From a Talisman’s Point of View

All the world is kindling, a brain ticking towards
the consummate light, black light man will claim as his
beginning. Stars tenuous as chalk on a cave wall,

destruction so loud it can only spore into timeless
horns of silence. The swamps gasp open:
egg, gristle, indigo-beating heart, the hairy carapace

in halls of fire ice grass. I drip down the bark,
gather them like notes in the slow syrup of grief. Become
the skin of a song no memory will survive, seraphim

of twigs, knots in rock and sea-bed, blood of furnaces,
incense. In spring the waves throw up my life
into the baskets of midwives and fishermen. I will inspire

warships. The drops of sun on a bride’s ears, around
her neck and ankles. I will blaze with her through
the duty-bound nights. Of conifer, agathis, hymenaea,

the blue-gummed earth where minor thieves of light
are chewed into a flawed, shining inheritance:
grave-diggers, godmakers, both will call me tears.