Via Negativa

Shiwanna/Esteban (conclusion)

If they allow me to live
beyond tonight,
what will I become?
Will they let me marry in,
join the priesthood?

Even if they kill me,
they’ll still press me
into service, won’t they?
String my scalp from a pole
for the women to see.
With these black locks
I could unseat
their gods of thunder . . .

A disembodied view of the back
of his own head. The red gambler–
a young man, almost a child,
with the ugliest face imaginable–
snatches it by the hair
& hurls it skyward,
a meteor in reverse.

The gambler glows–
all colors now–& is joined
by what could be his twin:
a pair of flames
cavorting among the viscera.
(Will the Heavenly Father find
this scent to his taste?)

Through the thick black smoke
he watches his dismembered parts
melt down,
each blow of the hammer
releasing sparks
with erratic flight paths,
rising
on butterfly wings:
yellow, blue, scarlet, white,
iridescent, black–

Let the ocean redeem
your inadequate alphabets–

What’s that?
I thought . . . Just a sparrow
awoken by my pacing.
Poor thing, forced to flutter
through the dark in search
of a better roost.
With all the owls about
he’d better be quick . . .

Shiwanna/Esteban (cont’d)

What’s life worth
without such visions?
Be it the full three
score & ten, or cut
however short–as long
as there’s one, continual encountering . . .

It made my head hurt
when I read William
of Ockham–sanest
of mad Franciscans–outline
the blind alleys
down which a mind
can lead the soul
possessed
by abstraction.
Though he missed everything, of course . . .

Who will miss me—
even notice
my absence? Who,
if they kill Marcos, will believe
these Indians?
My name–who will say it?
My work–how to keep it up
with the gourd gone
& almost all my faith
scattered along the way?

The friar would tell me
to pray: I believe.
Help Thou my unbelief.
Circular reasoning, sure,
the classic type.
But what the hell
did Aristotle know?
Or Seneca?
Or Pliny?
The high priests of Reason,
bloodless,
ignorant of all beyond their borders,
equating their backwater sea
with the great Ocean.

What did I know? These Seven
Cities are a joke: seven dusty towns,
seven confections of mud.
As crowded with busy little souls
as termite mounds.

Or are there in fact
only six, as some
of my guides kept saying?
Perhaps the seventh is just
a place for ceremony,
a capital where no one’s allowed
to spend the night. Or else
they have a different accounting,
refuse to let the whole dissolve
into enumerated parts.
Or simply equivocate . . .

Shiwanna/Esteban (cont’d)

Don’t believe it.
Neither what you hear in Cí­bola
nor the missed footfalls
of your jackrabbit
heart. Think
like a jackal thinks. Act
like a blacksmith: no
unnecessary blows. Remember
your unknown father
in whatever sort of heaven he may
still find good hunting.

They broke
the gourd: good riddance.
They stripped me
of amulets, bells & feathers,
tobacco pouch, even
the Holy Child
of Atocha: fine.
Maybe they’ll learn something.

From this cell I can hear
what goes on,
how they rush, argue,
fight among themselves.
Tonight I have nothing
but tomorrow I’ll make
their walls my armor–
you’ll see. They need
rain? I’ll bring it.
They’ll need protection
from Cortez,
from Coronado; I’ll be
their shield . . .

They have me figured
for a corpse. Well,
nothing cures whatever ails
like death. Old Bones,
you know what Hippocrates says:
we’re each sworn to guard
the other’s secrets,
yes? But in any case
you’re way too pale
for this climate.
That friar with
his shaved head sure ought
to earn a halo
from this, if only
to keep off the sun . . .

A good man, I admit. The rare
honest brownrobe, sure
of nothing but
God’s mercy. For that
I envy him. Still,
give me the license to think
my own, my will-
ful thoughts:
give me the desert
no one else wants, the shape-
shifting sands, the thorn-
scrub to explore
in an ever-diminishing circuit.
To chart, to map
in ever-growing detail,
right up to the smallest
spider mite,
a red mote in some vagrant angel’s eye.

Shiwanna/Esteban

The playing board retracts
its four scaly feet,
its tail,
its wizened head.
The players face each other
across the circle:
the red-painted gambler sits in the east,
the black-painted gambler in the west.

*

Each blows on his fingers,
whispers into his fists.

*

They toss the two-
sided sticks: red
& red
& red.
Red’s opponent feels the sticks turning
in his hands even before the cast.
Red & red again.

*

Now deep in the red, Black forfeits
more than his shirt. More.
More.

*

Stripped of rattles & feathers,
all his fetishes in
a muttering pile behind
his opponent’s back,
with his freedom now at stake,
what else can he put up?
No wife, no children–
I am all
I have left.

*

He removes his left arm
& sets it down by the pile.
Tosses the sticks:
red side up.
Removes his left leg. Red.
Right leg. Red.
Right arm. Red. Take off
your head. Red,
red: your ribs,
your vital organs . . .
__________

For more on the symbolism of black and red, see the notes to Cibola 52.