For Pantalay
Five strokes of eternity ago,
You dared to sail out to meet me
silent with long strides of the oar
as if you wanted no one to know you were coming, even the sea
even the waves still slamming against the statues of the past
lashed against the prow of your consciousness
As if Mazu herself would consume you, body and soul,
Should she ever know that you had deigned
to love your kingdom again.
You came out anyway
To meet the sovereign without sails
The rejidor without a settlement
A kingdom without heart that yearned to be king of no one but itself
Barku nteh prua.
But then, as if you had not thought to look in the depths beneath —
This is what you saw when you came out,
In your little sampan at the end of your world:
You saw the crown that you had thrown into the straits yourself
the day you gave yourself up to the waters and said
"No more. No more of this life
For I cannot see the sea."
And you saw me. Or, well, I cannot claim to know what you saw:
I know only what the legends say, and the legends say that
God looked upon creation
The tiger looked upon the sun
Tertullian looked upon Arfie
And you looked upon the boy who dared to dive into the wrecks beneath
the boy who gave himself up to your waters and said
"No more. No more of this life.
For you cannot see the sea."
You looked upon the boy who showed you
that it was not a crown, after all,
But a harbour, with every aching pull of the oar.
And so it was a harbour you raised around us,
Suspended between our scars and
High tide on the glassy rains of night
Sunset on the lanterns that ignited the rivers that ran between us
and united us as one shelter from the northwest storms
One story for the souls that know no voyage
One shipmaster to the boundless reaches of every empyrean waterfall.
This is our bara, our island whose journey will not stop
Our reality whose furious joy will not cease
No matter the waves that slam against the travellers of our pasts
No longer lashed to our prows of our conscience
but now become kolek sweeping across the seas on brave, fearless tears.
I asked if you would let me always be your almandine armada
faithful fleet of riches greater than the spessartine sun
Plundered from a hundred thousand injustices
And repurposed for a lifetime of endless redemption
Swifter than the rivers themselves.
And all I asked in return for my crown was that I always be your flood of sky,
Your archipelago of monsoons,
Your conqueror of coral hearts,
Your gate at the feet of the world tree to the isles of the sky and stars.
Your dream-anchor.
And now this is me, your king and your admiral,
charging ahead, dauntless in the jeers of destiny and the stars that go out,
the one who will always tell you to raise the islands to the heavens above and sing.
And this is you, my king and my harbourmaster,
mooring every fleeting thing to the refuge of my heart, clearing the roads for every lost jong
the one who will always tell me to lie back on the islands and breathe free.