A Map to the Next
World
In the last days of the fourth
world I wished to make a map
for those who would climb through
the hole in the sky.
My only tools were the desires of
humans as they emerged from the killing fields,
from the bedrooms and the
kitchens.
For the soul is a wanderer with
many hands and feet.
The map must be of sand and can't
be read by ordinary light.
It must carry fire to the next
tribal town, for renewal of spirit.
In the legend are instructions on
the language of the land,
how it was we forgot to acknowledge
the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.
Take note of the proliferation of
supermarkets and malls, the altars of money.
They best describe the detour from
grace.
Keep track of the errors of our
forgetfulness; a fog steals our children while we sleep.
Flowers of rage spring up in the
depression, the monsters are born there of nuclear anger.
Trees of ashes wave good-bye to
good-bye and the map appears to disappear.
We no longer know the names of the
birds here,
how to speak to them by their
personal names.
Once we knew everything in this
lush promise.
What I am telling you is real and
is printed in a warning on the map.
Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks
the earth behind us,
leaving a trail of paper diapers,
needles and wasted blood.
An imperfect map will have to do
little one.
The place of entry is the sea of
your mother's blood,
your father's small death as he
longs to know himself in another.
There is no exit.
The map can be interpreted through
the wall of the intestine --
a spiral on the road of
knowledge.
You will travel through the
membrane of death,
smell cooking from the encampment
where our relatives make a feast
of fresh deer meat and corn soup,
in the Milky Way.
They have never left us; we
abandoned them for science.
And when you take your next breath
as we enter the fifth world there will be no X,
no guide book with words you can
carry.
You will have to navigate by your
mother's voice, renew the song she is singing.
Fresh courage glimmers from
planets.
And lights the map printed with the
blood of history,
a map you will have to know by your
intention, by the language of suns.
When you emerge note the tracks of
the monster slayers
where they entered the cities of
artificial light and killed what was killing us.
You will see red cliffs. They are
the heart, contain the ladder.
A white deer will come to greet you
when the last human climbs from the destruction.
Remember the hole of our shame
marking the act of abandoning our tribal grounds.
We were never perfect.
Yet, the journey we make together
is perfect on this earth
who was once a star and made the
same mistakes as humans.
We might make them again, she
said.
Crucial to finding the way is this:
there is no beginning or end.
You must make your own
map.
~ Joy Harjo
~
(A Map to the Next World:
Poems)
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