Angarai (2002)

Angarai

Eighty feet isn't as high as it used to be
But with proper tires, and patience
You can roll all the way to the beach.
When you get there,
Avoid the Piping Plovers
Or the ghosts of hairy nudists,
Whichever it should be
And look out to sea.
You should see
In front of the back
Of the Block Island bluffs
Ocean going canoes.
The outline of a lookout
Cresting over the weak willed waves
Looking for a landing
Scanning the primordial landscape
And deciding
That this place is good.

Looking into the appraiser's eyes
I see only numbers:
Square footage, recent comparable sales,
Possible commission, tax rates.
Not a young couple,
Young as I remember them young,
Hopefully hanging a sign,
A sign which only hardy wanderers
Or the hopelessly lost
Would ever see,
A sign with would soon be overgrown
By the inexorable creep of nature's abundance
But a sign which meant
This is our home
A sign which said
Angarai.

An echo of a place continents away,
A small village of small mud houses
With low doorways and open breezeways
A village surrounded by rice paddies and railways
A place I don't remember
But a place my father
Scanning the primordial landscape of his mind
Remembered as the name of the place you call home.

Still I remember them as young:
Glenn put a cherry bomb in our mailbox
Peter had a minibike
Ann and I rode bicycles
Kevin punched my lunchbox
Richard died.

Even then I remember them as old:
Ben Vanderlaan was a clean old man
(As Paul McCartney would say, in Hard Days Night)
Toby Kurtzband had hair in his nose.
Later Astrid and Howie
And their baby
Who also died.

Today interlopers, trash, profiteers
No respect for what came before them.
They only know how things are
Not how they used to be.
To them it is their soil
To do with as they see fit.
But to me
They soil
My memories.

The trees are second generation
As I am second generation.
The soil is not so thin.
Against the fleeting plans of men
An eternal spirit works
Reverting the land to its natural state.

Low stone walls
Overgrown by lichen and moss
In the middle of deep woods
Recall that once this was a farm.
Men sought mastery over the land,
Imposed their will through spade and plow.
Ozymandias say:
"Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Angarai
Tamil village, New England woods, American city
Angarai
My grandfather, my father, my self, my son
Angarai
A place, a name, a sign
Angarai
The sacred thread
Knotting disparate lives
Lived over and over
To the end of time.