The Legendary

Still With Us

I.G. Rehorek

They are still with us
the old Europeans
with their symphonic whiskers
and laughing operas
and gloomy forests
and wall-eyed madonnas
and strange memories
of bones and battles
fought over and over
and flaming speeches
and whirling waltzes
and storms of philosophy
and tides of religion

they are still with us
the old Asians
with their tinkling songs
and their bearded operas
and bamboo memories
and Buddhas of mercy
and back-to-front alphabets
tasting of raw fish and bitter tea
and thin-sliced dreams
and cold clear spring water
pin-prick tortures
and the peace of a blue blue sky

they are still with us
the old Africans
with their dancing legends
and slapping stories
and painted songs
and carved rhinosceros dreams
shaped by hands and fires
stone kings with horse-faces
slaves of ivory
the flapping of trade-flags
and countless flying spears
and the zebra sunlight of wars
and drumming jungle heartbeats

they are still with us
the old Americans
with their Clovis points
and their Tea Parties
and Trails of Tears
and their lost jungle kingdoms
those totem-pole economies
gambling on the next harvest
and wheeling buffalo-hunters
and dealing in corn and beads
and scalped Creole singalongs
and ragging blues beat-box jazz

ah, and ah, they are still with us
the old Australians
with their roarimg fires
and wailing songlines
and giants and dwarves
and soaring eagle stories
oldest strangest fossils
heaving round boulders
and peeling opal trees
and endless roads of deepest secrets
of children stolen adults not returned
and Flying Doctor highways
and slouch-hat bridges...

and the world afternoon wears on
it's a cape it's a top-hat
it's a smiling vagabond -
all the riches and all the songs
are just layers and layers of skin
that sleep as the tide goes
out so very gently
and is greeted by the normal moon
and stars rise stars fall, little sisters :
we are natives
on this whirligig Earth !

"The Legendary" (April 20, 2010. Issue 16.)

I.G. Rehorek lives in South Australia, married 2 kids 1 wife 1 tenor sax 1 alto 2sopranos 1 trumpet lots of recorders 1 small dog teaches printmaking/art history/mural painting at Aboriginal college performance poet stage name avalanche shoe size 8 planet of origin Earth, apparently, specifically the Northern Hemisphere, Central Europe, City of Prague.