ROOTS Poem by Albertina Soepboer

Rookland

His long white neck will be your prize;
If I may peck his bright blue eyes.
We'll steal a golden lock or two,
And decorate our nest anew.

On an idle afternoon the clouds charged across
the sky. I leaned against a low church wall, hands
in my pocket, blue with cold, and I sang. Listen,
autumn is in the air, windwhips lash the trees.

The rook stared at me from atop the wall. Rain
buried my hurried breaths in blankets of gray.
Sweat beneath my raincoat. The black eye blew
closer, my shadow propped itself against old stone.

The wind drove trotting feet through the town.
Underneath the tree there was a place to squat,
to pee. My head sank toward the ground. Listen,
the wild storm has come, the rumbles fill the air.

A sweet smell drifted through the doorway,
impossible to place. I lay my finger in the slit,
still warm. A moment of seeing. The head
severed from the neck, a pool of blood, a dead eye.

How many times was it five o'clock, did the bell chime
again? Later I found the alley, the slaughterhouse,
the children singing in the silence of the rooks. Listen,
the long rain has come, the wind howls at the window.


Elderland

Witch, witch! Old witch!
Come away from your caldron!
Away from the woods in which you dwell!
Toothless old hag with a horrid smell,
Waiting to snatch our children!

Spring sea-misted over the distant meadows.
In the shed our rabbit smiled. I sought grass,
fresh grass shooting up out of the soil.

Behind me they stood sullenly and silently
in the wind. Their dull white elder blossoms
drooped with rain. I tapped the ancient bark.

It was her face that came thrusting out of
the furrowed depths. I turned quickly,
but she had already muttered witch, witch.

In late summer I picked the ripened clusters,
dropping them in my bucket till my hands hung
blood-red by the sides of my girlish frame.

Was it she who said that I would grow older,
that it was dark, shameful. I ran to the dank
and brackish meadow so as not to hear.

But time tumbled, the elderberries were boiled
over a fire. A strange tea with honey that made
my swollen red tummy turn upside-down.

That night the witch whispered in the tree, her
shadow flitted across the moon. Until I threw up
in surrender, and my body developed curves.


Farawayland

Poppet, moppet, doll,
Into the water they fall.
Mother is too far away,
To hear the child call.

On a bicycle in green rubber boots.
Dark is the land beneath my feet,
a wordless sign of all I cannot
name. We both know that I am
a stranger. Our languages fall still.

Whatever language I have left to give
comes in the night. My mouth full
of lemon custard. Grandpa plays
checkers, Grandma hangs laundry
on lines. Horses gallop in the pasture.

It begins in lingering fumes of potato
pesticide. The words no longer at my
beck and call. In the flickering light
a man fights his windmills. Land
that disappears beneath cobwebs.

The blue statue of a man roams
the fields. I call his name, root around
in the ground with him for a carrot.
Pus that oozes out of a sore. We
no longer talk in the now-world.

In the darkness he lies diaphanously
at my side, howling like a gray wolf.
Wounds I bandage with another language.
Land that can be given a name. Later
we turn into strangers once again.