William Kelii Kekaula Poet Free verse

Notes About The Poem

The Wake of Her Lands

Thy parting stream, bidst farewell from thee, weeping,
for 'tis gleam ceases, imaging the great sky,
but a worn face of iron and dread rises.
Thou art an old blade, with the snail-like decay, 
changes the land of its cedar and its birch.
Thy feet art hammers, and thy voice, a sharp wind,
that breaks the sacred song of our ancestors.
Thou speak of new worlds while our world goes unheard,
Thy hands clutching the earth like a stolen purse.
The gold that thee seek is from our very sun,
trapped within our soil, and thou will not find it.
Thou will find rot and the bones of thine own greed.
The wind through the long grass is not a welcome,
but a hissing of names that thou will not know.
Thou planted thy cross where the maize once claimed roots,
a splinter that stabs the heart of the forest.
Thine harvest is a field of bare promises,
and thy city, a tomb built from living trees.
The drumbeat heard is not our invitation,
but they are the thunder of a thousand feet,
running away from thy darkening shadow.
The woman who spoke thy tongue was not a bridge,
but a gouged-out echo from a forebearer,
that learned to mock the sound of its own capture.
The birds do not fly toward thy ships at sea,
but they turn their wings to the rich-hungry West.
The land does not yield; it always remembers: 
And its memory is a long, cold winter.

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