Ward Kelly

Chile

Help me, help me, I am never coming
back to these weary mountains, never
returning to your black skin . . .
for white men do not truly know
how to return to women who have
waited for centuries.

Save me, save me, I was never leaving
your custodial skin, never wandering
off from the belief in what waited
at your thighs.

It was the dead who waited there . . .
you never told me your skin was so
clever as to provide maternity
for both dead and breathing,
and I now see that even though
you never spoke the words,
your eyes danced again and again
from the joy of this consummation.

You sought to marry me with
the dead. Yet why must I leave?
It is not you who sends me
away, and not the dead . . .

then at the circumference I understood
that I cannot see the enormity
of the problem the dead souls
must solve, while they, themselves,
do not have the solutions provided me
by touching skin.