In The Island of Forgetfulness

(perhaps Inspired by Nietzsche’s ‘On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense’)

After the sea took the ship for its own

- a jealous hoarder,

I washed ashore white sand,

a graveyard of clams.

It was an island,

Or let me put it this way -

among the waters, in their extension,

blinding in the day,

and at night dissolving into soot,

in the ever receding horizon,

It was the only respite of shadows,

of the murky obscurity

between stark light and the bare dark.

A fellow from the crew

floated-in a few days later.

As dead as the wood he was clutching-on.

He had once told me,

“When I’m gone, let my body be of use to science.”

I conceded.

Since the dark clouds piling on the horizon

threatened to plunge all into oblivion,

and the menacing howl of the wind, like cold metal,

was steadily chipping into memory,

I conceded.

Just a day after digging into his heart,

noting the meandering arteries -

upon tree-bark, with ink from trees,

I returned to the shore to find a vulture’s wake.

The skeleton broke through his tanned skin,

like ivory.

I dragged him into the forests,

away from the charring sun,

and yet, the next day,

I found a flower growing out of his naked heart.

By autumn he was claimed by the falling leaves,

dust had clogged the pores of his skin,

thus complete, and whole again,

The Earth took his body for its own,

Like the Sea had done to his soul.

One day, what was left

was carried away by the ants,

all the while consoling, assuring

in strange, conciliatory whispers.

What was to be known now, except by the Earth?

I discarded my parchment soon thereafter.

One night,

When the clamour of the birds

had died down with the macaques’ revels,

deep within the canopy.

And the singing whales had all gone to sleep.

The constellations hidden under cloud’s cover.

When the rise and fall of empires of ants

had gone unnoticed inside the earth’s womb,

Within cloistered colonnades of mycelial walls.

On such a demented night,

I was sitting, alone, on the shore.

The silence, like providence, flowed with liquid grace.

And brought with it those rolling storms,

I had once spied on the horizon.

The roaring, amnesic rain covered all of existence.