Sunday Poem

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"The wasichu (white man) came like locusts from the east with promises not to devour our future.  But not one promise was fulfilled.  The destiny of the wasichu was to count coup on, then to kill and scalp our destiny." --Sees Nothing New, a shaman of the Plains Indians


Brave World
Tony Hoagland

But what about the courage

of the cancer cell

that breaks out from the crowd

it has belonged to all its life
.......................................

like a housewife erupting

from her line at the grocery store

because she just can't stand

the sameness anymore?
.......................................

What about the virus that arrives

in town like a traveler

from somewhere faraway

with suitcases in hand,
.......................................

who only wants a place

to stay, a chance to get ahead

in the land of opportunity,

but who smells bad,
.......................................

talks funny, and reproduces fast?

What about the microbe that

hurls its tiny boat straight

into the rushing metabolic tide,
.......................................

no less cunning and intrepid

than Odysseus; that gambles all

to found a city

on an unknown shore?
.......................................

What about their bill of rights,

their access to a full-scale,

first-class destiny?

their chance to realize
.......................................

maximum potential?-which, sure,

will come at the expense

of someone else, someone

who, from a certain point of view,
.......................................

is a secondary character,

whose weeping is almost

too far off to hear,
.......................................

a noise among the noises

coming from the shadows

of any brave new world.
.......................................

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