The Winds of Orisha

 

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The Winds of Orisha

- Audre Lorde

I

This land will not always be foreign.

How many of its women ache to bear their stories

robust and screaming like the earth erupting grain

or thrash in padded chains mute as bottles

hands fluttering tracts of resistance

on the backs of once lovers

half the truth

knocking in the brain like an angry steampipe

how many

long to work or split open

so bodies venting into silence

can plan their next move?

Tiresias took 500 years they say to progress into woman

growing smaller and darker and more powerful

until nut-like, she went to sleep in a bottle

Tiresias took 500 years to grow into woman

so do not despair of your sons.

II

Impatient legends speak through my flesh

changing this earths formation

spreading

I will become myself

an incantation

dark raucous many-shaped characters

leaping back and forth across bland pages

and Mother Yemonja raises her breasts to begin my labour

near water

the beautiful Oshun and I lie down together

in the heat of her body my truth becomes stronger

Shango will be my brother roaring out of the sea

earth shakes our darkness swelling into each other

warning winds will announce us living

as Oya, Oya my sister my daughter

destroys the crust of the tidy beaches

and Eshu's black laughter turns up the neat sleeping sand.

III

The heart of this country's tradition is its wheat men

dying for money

dying for water for markets for power

over all people's children

they sit in their chains on their dry earth

before nightfall

telling tales as they wait for their time

of completion

hoping the young ones can hear them

earth-shaking fears wreath their blank weary faces

most of them have spent their lives and their wives

in labour

most of them have never seen beaches

but as Oya my sister moves out of the mouths

of their sons and daughters against them

I will swell up from the pages of their daily heralds

leaping out of the almanacs

instead of an answer to their search for rain

they will read me

the dark cloud

meaning something entire

and different.

When the winds of Orisha blow

even the roots of grass

quicken.