And Then I Stepped Outside…
written by: Emanuel Pope
And then I stepped outside,
first my feet
which no longer touched the ground,
my hand that barely held my body,
then the other one too,
trembling,
with the flask of innocence,
my mouth that no longer spoke
and my chest in whose shadow
I could no longer shelter
my anxieties.
Thus I arrived at the camp of my brothers:
The Tribe of White Feathers.
As they were brought in ancient times,
to the council of the elders,
the bile and kidneys of enemies,
the heart and forehead bone of ancestors.
And then followed
the long and agonizing afternoon
also called the afternoon of “red embers:”
in the midst of my brothers
who listened to my weeping:
my weeping like words,
my words like weeping.
From time to time, the truth-hungry mouth
of an Indian, a brother of mine,
bit greedily into me,
into the flesh of my heart,
and his mouth began to ferment
as wine ferments in autumn,
blood-red.
– This one, he would say, lived and how he lied,
only for the hearts of his brothers did he lie and sin. HIS HEART IS RIGHT!
I have spoken!
…and my heart would unfurl even more
in tears of gratitude.
And then he would spit me out of himself,
into the dust of the circle of consulting elders
of my tribe, the Tribe of White Feathers.
And again they would start to sing and murmur with the shamans,
until another came and lifted me
from there, from the dust,
me from myself,
he lifted me,
and looking at me as if I were a piece of glass
in the midday sun
he listened to me with his probing eyes.
I would then stiffen with fear in his hand.
And my brother would begin to speak of all he saw there:
– His heart is deceitful, he would begin,
you can see through it, but everything is changed
and you cannot trust it,
just as you cannot trust the stream
when you want to fish for its barbel.
He is where he is not, and is not where he appears!
I have spoken!
…and my heart would break, it would break from within itself from weeping
without being able to stop in any way:
How could my brother doubt my heart?
I would fall back into the dust of my tribe!
and I would wallow there, and scream and plead
until evening, when it seemed everyone had forgotten me,
but a child would lift me from there,
like a stone,
he would lift me from the ground,
and placing me in the bison skin of his slingshot,
he would aim me at one of the playful clouds
on the vastness of the sky-sea.
– Look at him, look at him, he would then shout,
Look how light and right his heart flies with the clouds above, and though it has no wings like birds, it flies light… up, up.
The elders watched, the young people, looking at me, seemed to love each other even more
and all believed in each other.
Thus, I stepped outside for the first time
and just as I returned home to my own,
into the Tribe of White Feathers:
first my feet
which no longer touched the ground,
my hand that barely held my body,
then the other one too,
trembling,
with the flask of innocence,
my mouth that no longer spoke
and my chest in whose shadow
I could no longer shelter
my anxieties, now become
the dreams of some
endless horizons.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
Poem dedicated to the Tribe of White Feathers, small wild plants hidden in the grass of Ireland’s lands, also called “Bog Cotton” (Lat. Eriophorum angustifolium)
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