She recalled the fear that had overwhelmed her soul,
something had seized her throat so she couldn't cry
out to them, white birds, wild, light, drifting
in the sky which had turned the most remote black.
White birds in black sky, white scream in her throat,
hair splashing the shoulders chased by the awesome bird
hung in lulled air like an ancestor's soul, heavy,
languid, and waiting for an infusion of flesh—
another fill of forgetfulness, heaving,
not hiding her—like a mirror refusing a look
at herself from behind her startled shoulder;
the familiar landscape fleeing from her cry for help,
perhaps at the behest of a god, with his sad immortality,
knowing the images to be thus seized and begotten
from this shivering flesh—wild birds, flying,
no, words, healing...white and fleeting, up in the lightened sky.
She recalled that alone, she of all women, she,
the mother of the nation of mythmakers, the generation of
myth transforming itself into memory—man
of fire, taking her moistened lips; his voice,
chasing her, has become her children's; light,
gentler than her memory still not in her full command,
lighter, with gentler movements, more tact, less mythology,
the singing without the myth within; in the time
allotted for myth-making—her children singing
in the space allotted for healing music; sounds
that she remembered as the very same...
One last time they have seized her throat: wild, black birds, fly...