Visitation

Visitation

Afterwards, we would remember the sudden appearance

of the two-headed yellow snake crawling from the trees

to the edge of the gate the moment I poured the water.

We would remember how the snake drank thirstily,

and did not try to cross over.

Andre would tell of the thing that touched him, and I would tell

it was a woman. Her brown shriveled arm caressed his shoulder,

remembering what it was to be fully fleshed. Remembering the warmth

of her lover’s long, calloused fingers inside the curve of her back.

And Rodrigo. He would tell that when I started singing

a black woman, with a blue ribbon around her waist, sat down on the tree stump,

smiled, and sang with me. How she danced the old way.

Her feet shuffling counter clockwise, her body bent in half, her hand

on her hip, her shoulders opening and closing to take flight.

We sailed here on a boat with a bad engine

from a ilha de medo, the island of fear,

an old lepers island where giant sea turtles lay eggs.

We watched four men roast a turtle as the empty shell,

broad as my back, floated in the water.

The unhatched eggs, the size of a man’s fist, baked on the sand.

They assured us it was dead when they found it.

It is possible. Nothing in this place is as it seems.

I have learned to trust the five eyes in the backs of my heads.

We left as a second turtle walked heavily on shore.

We were too afraid not to.

It does not surprise me that my day ends at locked gates

of old graves in a place that threatens to keep us if we

take even a grain of sand.

It does not surprise me that I stand at these gates,

a six-foot cotton towel wrapped around the top of my chest,

my lime-green floppy hat pushed down on my head,

a plastic water bottle in my right hand.

It does not surprise me that the two brasilros at my side,

Andre and Rodrigo, knew what I meant when I said

to each of them: Agora, now.

I could not leave without libation.

After lunch, the Old Ones cried, Daughter,

it has been decades since anyone has visited,

since someone has unlocked the gate next to this old whale-oil

church we built, to soothe us with song.

We are lonely. No one speaks our language

so we do not ask them for help.

In the land of the Egun they dream of God

and say prayers that chant us into oblivion.

We are ashamed of our children who are ashamed of us.

Look, our headstones crumble although we try

to keep them standing. They let visitors run half naked

before us without sharing the local highlight: here

original Africans are buried. Instead they live down the hill

selling beads and their bodies to tourists who wave them away like flies.

When it rains, they cannot hear our keening

above these ground-level coffins returning to mud.

And so we climbed the steps carved out of stone.

The man from the bar offered to lead us.

He said there is no key to the graveyard. No names on the headstones.

We do not remember who is buried here.

We come only to see the ocean from another view.

It does not surprise me that he disappeared when I began to pray.

That all the Yoruba I knew flooded my heart.

That it flew from my tongue as I remembered being taught centuries ago.

We are not your children, I said, but strangers

who heard your voices on the wind.

At the last ase, Andre turned to walk away.

I held him and Rodrigo steady and close.

Walk backwards from this place, I said.

They are lonely for life, tired of dying.

In the home of Egun, because the children do not remember,

the egun will manifest through the living.

If we are not careful, tomorrow we could look in the mirror

and see four eyes instead of two.

We should sing until they can no longer see us.

We remained silent after the last song.

A small jagged voice whispered at my right ear:

You are Abégúndé.

Daughter, thank you. The birthmark on your neck,

where your throat rests between Africa and Brasil,

is your sanction to sing even the dead into their graves without fear.

We will wait for your lullabies to deliver us into Memory.

We will wait for your return.