A. A. Walker

And we are standing now,   my country and I,   hair in the wind,             my hand puny in its enormous fist and now the strength             is not in us but above us,             in a voice that drills the night and the hearing like             the penetrance of an apocalyptic wasp.             And the voice complains that for centuries Europe             has force-fed us with lies and bloated us with pestilence, for it is not true that the work of man is done that we have no business being on earth that we parasite the world that it is enough for us to heel to the world whereas the work              of man has only begun and man still must overcome all the interdictions wedged in              the recesses of his fervor and no race has a monopoly on beauty,   on intelligence,   on strength and there is room for everyone at the convocation of conquest and we know now that the sun turns around our earth lighting              the parcel designated by our will alone and that every star falls              from sky to earth at our omnipotent command.

I saw Leonora seated on a wooden throne whose back was carved with the bust of an angel. Naked except for a Jewish prayer shawl, her gaze fixed unblinking and focused on infinity, she seemed like the figure on the prow of a ship from an ancient civilization. she had left the world of the rational. She continued to recite in English, taking no notice of my presence. I sat on the floor, facing her. There was little left of any individuality in her. She seemed possessed simultaneously by all women who had ever existed. The words poured out of her mouth like an endless river of invisible insects. I remember a few of her verses: I, the eye that sees nine different worlds and tells the tale of each. I, Anuba, who saw the guts of pharaoh, embalmer, outcast. I, the lion goddess who ate the ancestors and churned them into gold in her belly. I, the lunatic and fool meat for worse fools than I. I, the bitch of Sirius, landed here from the terrible hyperbole to howl at the moon. I, the bamboo in the hand of Huang Po. I, the Queen bee in the entrails that melted it again. I, the gypsy who brought the first greasy Tarot from Venus. I, the tree of wisdom whose thirteen branches lead eternally back again. I, the eleventh commandment: Thou shalt despise no being.