Ulysses Speaks to the Children at the Border

Children of the borderland, 

   intrepid space travelers, 

   this will not be your last winter.

   These painful lights-

   hard blinking eyes

   of some angry god-

   will not shutter suddenly,

   enveloping you

   in your mother’s embrace.

  The desert at your back,  

   strewn with your patient bundles,

   will not sing the coyotes

   to sleep with your song. 

   The end is not in sight, 

   and it never will be, 

   oh you seekers,

   sons and daughters of my heart.

   There is no mapped world. 

   This truth you hold under your ribs,

   where most mortals, entangled

   in blood and sinew,

   house lungs, not dreams.

   Rivers change course suddenly, 

   become monstrous and then,

   wistful as nymphs,

   tell sad stories

   to the stones that line their banks. 

   The skies, unstreaked 

   by the glare of dirty neon,

   are still impossible to read. 

   But take comfort in these things. 

   No border impedes you.

   May your narrow feet, pointed

   as ever toward the moon,

   never lose their path.

   May your hearts, undisguised, 

   beat sturdily 

   in the direction of

   new worlds, oceans as yet

   undiscovered. 

   May you hold up your small hands

   to your eyes

   and spreading your fingers wide

   see through them to a world 

   so plentiful and strange

   that even the gods,

   those clamorous creatures,

   grow silent with wonder. 

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