"Singing to the Earth"

So my body went on growing, by night,
went on pleading & singing to the earth
I was born to be woven back into Love,
let me see if I can’t sink my roots
deeper into you, your minerals & water,
your leaf rot & gold, your telling & un-
telling of the oldest tales inscribed
on wind-carved rocks, silt & grass,
your songs & prayers, your oaths & myths,
your nights & days in one unending lament,
your luminous swarm of wet kisses
& stings, your spleen & mind,
yur outrageous forgetting & remembrance,
your ghosts & rebirths, your thunderstones
& mushrooms, & your kind loss of memory.


Yusef Komunyakaa, “Nighttime Begins with a Line by Pablo Neruda”