I Have Achieved Me Poem by Tendai Rinos Mwanaka

The palimpsest bliss is the green-glimmer of the sun corona.
People in huge..., terribly huge numbers as they dip into shadows
and their meanings are lost.

The colours of those distant rocks: grey, gold...deep amber!
A line of brown grey, pale-pasted ribbons of rocks
are like hues of an egret's feathers..., flying past me, the past:
It is like rocks flying on their own fingers.

The faint sound of voices fixing into my memories
and bestowing the inward view to give myself a little rope
to haul inwards.
I know it, I have always known it:
that something is broken inside me.

It is an ancient conceit
to think that there is only one sound in this entire universe
and everything else is just echoes of that sound.
But I will tunnel in like victims always surviving this abuse
by speaking to fish in my own dreams
without even the need to respond to myself.

There is nothing I can do now but don't ever think
that I am a coward, for once I was in love,
and I loved her so much more...that wild, wild shore.
And now I am thankful that I have achieved me.

For you are studying me intimately and I am in these tamed records
You only have a face to measure me by.

But don't sheath your blade; draw the blood of a finger
and create your own river.
Who owns this river passage?
Not you, none of us, no one is...
More transparent than these muddied waters
that are the blood waters of our fingers.