The Spaniard Meets An Indian Princess Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I will die by your borders,
Your estuaries,
You silken paths-
I follow your tracks
Through the thick underbrush
And around the edge of your
Gulf.
Hostile Indians shoot
Stone-tipped arrows at me
From beneath palm meadows-
You set sandy panthers
Loose to stop me,
To extinguish me,
To defeat me,
But I have seen you once
Through the sunlight
And swaying banyans,
The last of your kind
Washing your thighs
In the slow streams
With the early crocodiles
Guarding you,
With the white egrets
Fanning you;
You were a misty portrait
Bordered by cypress curtains
And filigreed by stunted
Citrus -
Cicadas crossed their legs
Back and forth for you,
Playing their primal violins;
Manatees watched religiously
Like lazy priests from the
Deeper gladed waters,
As dove-tailed deer nuzzled
Acorns from your fingers-
Your eyes were free things,
Your eyes were unhinged
From society-
Your eyes were saintly and effortless,
Like driftwood in deep inlets
Stripped of inhibitions of language
And revealing your life’s daylight;
But when they saw me
They took off startled, scattered
Ripples over the water’s surface,
And the swamp grew suddenly
Quiet and hostile-
But, heedless, I come for you.
As you can see, I bare no cross
About my neck. I have no religion
Save for the one your acceptance
Would give to me.
I do not
Come with the others to
Take from you,
To build stones upon you,
To diminish you—
I come now but to worship you,
To be guided by you,
To kneel before the teaching of
Your eyes on all natural things,
And to become a part of your landscape.
I need to find you,
To reside in but an aspect of you
To do for you as
Those things which you cherish without speaking—
Thus I hunt you now
Ceaselessly, to die if need be,
To become the extinction of a forgotten soul,
To nourish the memories your passing
Leaves behind as you flee from me,
Not to capture you,
But to hold your hand
In these dark quiet spaces of the world,
And here, to love you.