Ever So Maybe

By A.L. Wendt

The village sleeps armoured in darkness,
As the sea roars dumbly on the reef,
The flies, the dogs, and the people
Have all sung themselves to a tired sleep.
I walk alone on the tortured beach
Not knowing where I am going or who I am.
Two days have passed since my return,
Two long lonely days, of knowing
And yet not knowing the place
Where the friends of my childhood have gone,
Or the shrine of the temple where I must worship.
I feel a stranger in the womb
Of the land from whence I came,
A worshipper in an alien temple.
The mother of the child that I was
Has long since departed from the house of my people,
And the brothers I once knew
Have blossomed into men who now seem foreign to me.
The clod, the air, the birds, have not changed,
But I have changed, I have become
As like a tree that has found two soils,
As the river that has changed its course.
The harvest that I am is a blend
Of what I have gathered in the land of my youth,
And the scraps that I had found in the land of the whiteman.
The table of my father has given me meat for two whole days,
Yet I do not know what he thinks of me,
The hands of the people have grasped mine,
Yet I do not know if the friendship they bear
Is for the child that they knew
Or for the man that I have become.
The moon now comes, floating on the song of the sea,
And the land half becomes in the form of light,
I feel a deep consolation in half seeing,
And my soul confused flees to the moon
Hoping to find there freedom and peace:
"O moon that has always been and always will be,
O source of wonder and half light that
Had always slept with my forefathers, the birds, and the Seed.
O song that had been in the cradle of the child of me,
Give me a sign, give me the answer.
page 26 To the puzzle of the life that I now own,
Show me the way to the rose garden,
So that I may find there the seed
That I must grow to change what I have become."
But the moon silent still
Throws back her light at me:
Dawn now peers over the limits of the sea,
Soon the land will resume its form in full light,
And I will have to face again the troubled day.
Maybe soon I will find the lighted way
Thru the wilderness of confusion and doubt,
Maybe soon, maybe, maybe, ever so maybe!