Five Poems

Cinema

We may pilot a refitted three-masted collier or a state-of-the-art starship,
it does not matter which, when we have sailed too long in space or at sea,
the mission, to find breadfruit or survivors, shriveled to a hard monotony.
When land swings into sight, as it eventually does, in glorious Metrocolor,
the shore bristling with a thousand spears packed tightly as a wheat field,
how can it not bear the look of love as well, a planet like Earth but better?
There will be, of course, a father, a powerful king or brilliant professor,
who raised love to perfection and shielded her from pricks of knowledge.
He will have a servant, a robot capable of sewing silk dresses overnight
or a translator trusted by the island and wise in the ways of the intruders.
The natives are expendable. They can line up to hold a curious fishing net
or the planet can be all landscape and void of people. Crucial to the plot,
however, is the drum of impending havoc. The monster traveled with us.
Whether the name of evil is Original Sin or Id, Colonialism or Patriarchy,
we don't know but that does not stop it from murdering our companions.
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