Soon, they will dismantle the fish,
the banana stands.
For a long time now, the hotel bar
at the end of the pier has stood
vacant and closed.
The far point, from where
on so many nights I stood, watching
the lights of the night fishermen—
soon even that will sink from view.
And my own house. It, too, will
be lifted from the root, so that,
only four round stumps, beneath it,
will remain. Each one so remote,
finally, from the form they bore
and from each other, that they will
dream that they are trees, bearing only
emptiness between them.
I will climb to the highest point. Wait
for the water to rise.
For the lights of the fishermen to
blink out, one by one, like stars—
long after the fishermen have all been
drowned.
Then, I, too, will be dismantled.
My skull—through which once, as above
the stuccoed walls, the brass band played—
will empty; my heart, picked clean from its
root, will leave the four corners of my body
at last so remote from one another that
they, too, will dream that they are trees;
