Children of the Pilbara

 

I
There is a certainty engraved in the sky       that a set of footprints      on an island    can
only be washed away at nighttime.

II
Protectors of dawn,
they are nighttime angels

circling
round    and round     and round

whispering,
ludic smiles into our ears

trickling down into blood soil,
they are red sand mountains carving lines in our toes

darkened sweat,       our skins are shields
not sites for target practice,

so this be the nature of gravity

III
they are granite fossils

sitting,
day    by day    by day

statues of unspoken stillness,
they speak in silent reverberations

distant echoes of     my home is ocean clear,
sky heavy,

my home
is made of drought,

i stand on fugitive clouds

IV
the earth migrates in space, unsettling
round    and round   and round
day   by day     by day

un
till

still silence is found in inverse entropy,
chaos to pattern to chaos

cyclical,
these are divine prayers

chanted by the angels of daytime,
protectors of dusk

V
Children of the Pilbara        speak the language of the winds         seek shelter in
the sun         etch their homes in the ocean,

water dense.

 

Zainab Zahra Syed

Author: Zainab Zahra Syed

Zainab Zahra Syed is a performance poet and something of a 21st century nomad. Originally from Pakistan, she has spent most of her life living and roaming through this earth. She is currently working on her first full length manuscript which weaves the history of Pakistan from partition to today, with personal narrative in an attempt to reconcile memory and the act of remembering.