… I have known crude beginnings. I have known vague. I

have come into, upon this place learning, learning to be

brave, learning that I had set my hand to the plough

apparently along where Walcott hailed as the straits of

heaven. I was going to be lost at times and I wonder if I

should call it lost or searching. I only have to connect

whether from the deep to heights the lowly to the elevated

and lifted-up darkness into light the prostitute’s white

linen to the puritan’s frock the priest to the clinical hypnotherapist

the fisherman to the royal housekeeper

wherever they figured along the straits each bearing their

goblet each carrying the mark of the wild in the flesh its

provocations and syndromes its commanding trumpet

calls to discipline its frailties its passionate spaces their

contribution to thought and its gathering up in reason

demanding that brothers and sisters dwell together in

unity with oil blessings and thanksgivings. Here we do not

bear the mark of separation between secular and sacred,

an embodiment we should not deny. It is liberated

people’s sacrifice of joy a contextualizing of our material

economic reality. This is the point when thought and

imagination shango. It is here that I want to sleep but

sleeping only wakes me. It is here that flesh is weak and

the spirit shakes dust off its wings. Here food is media and

drink a rendezvous with rivers. Fish is now sky-life and

corn the wind-shaken blade. It is here in the dance that

the musician’s finger-tips feel like marble on the strings

and slides and picks with assurance. Thanks to

AS SHE RETURNS

55

Dominican musician Maximin Powell for this insight. Hail

Bro! Here in the geography of mind and soul time and

space have no boundaries and physics earns a quantum

quality. Here is a flawless acupunctural contact a Hindu’s

bliss a Buddha’s heavy stillness a Christian’s resurrection

rumbling a Rastafarian’s fire I blazing into Babylon’s evil.

Here in the invisible wind is a transformation at Mecca a

humanist’s urge to love an atheist in the heights of reason.

Here is a Quaker in silence. Here is a Baptist in the throes

of the spirit a Pentecostalist’s ascension into passion of

prayer a fisherman’s full net bursting in morning’s sun, a

Kabalist silenced, a blind man cured a Mother’s gift of a

child after three days into labor. It is the oneness plane.

Here the milk knows the child and the blood its bone. Here

the prey knows its hunter and the whale communes with

the language and structure of the oceans governments. It

is here that the congregation mediates and priests follow.

Here the ant marries the Internet and they build an

institution of undeclared ownership. It is no one’s

property and it will not be taken colony. Here men cannot

legitimize self-interest or vagabonds reject their love for

justice. Here there is no insecurity in neighborhoods and

mushroom clouds will not eat the lungs nor weaken

bodies to insanity. Blessed are those who have evidence of

this here. It is crucial, since here also, deception thrives

on restless minds. It appears that anything that can be

thought of already exist. There is no need for thought. All

one has to do is taste, consume. Truly they satisfy your

STEINBERG HENRY

every need. Think of it they say and it is available. Here

thought is material expression, reflection flighty. Prayer

takes time and time is money. It is here some claim that

history is dead and men in their reach for unlimited

wealth in the face of poverty and death hunger and

desperation disease and control contend that God too is

dead. It is here they conclude that spirit ends and the

dollar begins. It is here that the righteous are persecuted

and the middle passage rolls. It is here that tens of

thousands are scattered on ocean floors. See a Mother

and her child rising from the ocean floor yet another and

still another this one clutching a Coptic-looking cross.

This one died in rough seas jumping the deck. These

stories?

I have only just arrived. My colors are fresh and

dripping. Here I learn. Here every entrant learns. In fact

here we eat and learn. We consume the word. We are sure

that before the thing was one sound, one verse, the Word

becoming!

-          Drawn from Steinberg Henry’s ‘As She Returns’ published at http://www.publishamerica.com