A Map To The Next World

Map to the Next World


In the last days of the fourth world
I wished to make a map
for those who would climb
through the hole in the sky.

My only tools were the desires of humans
as they emerged from the killing fields,
from the bedrooms and the kitchens.

For the soul is a wanderer
with many hands and feet.

The map must be of sand
and can't be read by ordinary light.
It must carry fire to the next tribal town,
for renewal of spirit.

In the legend are instructions
on the language of the land,
how it was we forgot
to acknowledge the gift,
as if we were not in it or of it.

Take note of the proliferation
of supermarkets and malls,
the altars of money.
They best describe the detour from grace.

Keep track of the errors
of our forgetfulness;
a fog steals our children while we sleep.

Flowers of rage spring up
in the depression, the monsters
are born there of nuclear anger.

Trees of ashes wave good-bye
to good-bye
and the map appears to disappear.

We no longer know the names
of the birds here,
how to speak to them
by their personal names.

Once we knew everything
in this lush promise.

What I am telling you is real
and is printed in a warning on the map.
Our forgetfulness stalks us,
walks the earth behind us,
leaving a trail of paper diapers,
needles and wasted blood.

An imperfect map will have to do
little one.

The place of entry is the sea
of your mother's blood,
your father's small death
as he longs to know himself
in another.

There is no exit.

The map can be interpreted
through the wall of the intestine --
a spiral on the road of knowledge.

You will travel through
the membrane of death,
smell cooking from the encampment
where our relatives make a feast
of fresh deer meat and corn soup,
in the Milky Way.

They have never left us;
we abandoned them for science.

And when you take your next breath
as we enter the fifth world
there will be no X,
no guide book with words
you can carry.

You will have to navigate
by your mother's voice,
renew the song she is singing.

Fresh courage glimmers from planets.

And lights the map
printed with the blood of history,
a map you will have to know
by your intention,
by the language of suns.

When you emerge note
the tracks of the monster slayers
where they entered the cities
of artificial light and killed
what was killing us.

You will see red cliffs.
They are the heart, contain the ladder.

A white deer will come to greet you
when the last human climbs
from the destruction.

Remember the hole of our shame
marking the act of abandoning
our tribal grounds.

We were never perfect.

Yet, the journey we make together
is perfect on this earth
who was once a star
and made the same mistakes as humans.

We might make them again, she said.

Crucial to finding the way is this:
there is no beginning or end.

You must make your own map.


~ Joy Harjo ~

Posted over on Panhala