I come from the marshes, the swamplands,
Fish swam around my webbed feet,
Swans sang hymns of the world below;
Storks nourished my tender mind
and whispered
The darkest secrets of water and motherhood,
Tales of the deluge, of air
condensed
With silence.
In the belly of our maker
I found refuge through
Deception and makeshift wit –
The will of lizards, the patience
of the spider’s snare;
Finding spaces where the darkness
can be filled with lightning.
Ancient curses on my lips,
My eyes full of honey;
The tears of the Earth
and all its ministries.
We are the fallen armies
redeeming Nature
From the wicked grasp
of our precognition and fickle
desires of men;
Our snakeskin is a mark
Of the beast and the angel
Entwined as DNA, our fingers
Sunken in the origins of matter;
the primordial mud.
And when we rise,
We must fall again, as it is written,
Into the Netherland Empire
of our brethren;
And only sound will be our witness
As the Word made us.
It will slay us.
Amen.
© Milana Vujkov, Netherland Empire, 2014
Poets, Mavericks & Prophets 