A Surveyor's Journal Poem by Ishion Hutchinson

for Wilson Harris

I took my name from the aftersky
of a Mesopotamian flood,
birdless as if culture had shed its wings
into a ground vulture on the plain.
Beneath the astral plane, a war-ripped sail,
rigged to its mast, a lantern and a girl,
who swayed and stared
off where the waves raced backwards.
I begged her in signs. She jumped
overboard, arms sieving seaweed, eyes netting home.

Dear Ivy, you live in my veins.
Spurned flesh, I couldn't bridle
the weathervane's shift; it turned and turned
into a landfall, and I, panting panther,
sleek carnivore of the horse-powered limbs,
ran from a reign of terror.
All my despairs in green rain, on leaves;
I prayed to the mantis, head wrapped
in white, reading the "Song of God"
over a bowl of beef. Afterwards,
I hemmed into my skin this hymn: