A Narration of Melancholic Elation

A poem my sister Rochelle wrote a few weeks ago…

Inner Peace
A Response to Octavio Paz’s “The Other”

Shanti, Shanti
The Truth is: WE ARE ONE.
Connected by space,
Dispersed through time.

Oh distant brother,
One day we shall meet
And vague memories of familial ties
Will coincide with the life not destined for me.
To unite childhood impressions
Perpetually persisting,
Absorbed by loose tea leaves brewed to perfection
Only to quench another rejection.
They built me a dam, and you but a bridge,
Creating a nest for a fertilized creation.

Oh Shanti my friend,
It is through foreign lenses,
That I vicariously experience what should be innate
Patience is a virtue so I sit here and wait…
and wait…
For I was created and shipped to the West
And it’s here I reside: a label consumed on the back of your neck.

Face to face
Dear Shanti, you’ll see
A universal minority
Navigates through this majority.
Striving to be seen as someone other than merely “exotic.”
So squint your eyes f u r t h e r than ever before
And you’ll see that Truth is far greater
Than what lies at the seams.

I know of your ruins,
The tongue of your mother,
The depth of your roots,
The pain of your land.
But until you embody the here and the now,
You continue to view an imaginative me.
And me unto you,
I reciprocate such a decree,
Determined to release some intangible dream,
To belong to a world so different from me.

Shanti, Shanti
The Truth is: WE ARE ONE.
Inventing a space
Waiting for time.

April 18, 2005

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