Eli sa nomi Kablaza.
Di kabelu, or horse,
and aza, wings, that of course have been lost
from popular reimaginings, the process
of struggling free of
everything in that image painted inside you and I,
painted with absolute, terrifying force.
But isti Kristang belu kung nubu.
No matter in what time period, and in whatever our people have newly been mired
in, we have still found things to admire
in everything, in even ladrang-ladrang and liars
who claim to know everything,
even that Saturn had rings
before the Maori somehow knew the same
without telescope, without lenses, without all these Europeans ways of seeing
who we really are not.
Who we really once could have been:
even if we were only a mere dwarf planet (some say a re-skin)—
even Kuiper Belt Objects get a name, a number, an identification that begins
to inspire
something deep within
to revive, and transpire, and take its first breaths, to determine
who it will be,
whether it neighs, brays or whinnies:
whether the wings it elevates us all on,
higher and higher,
are made of wind, or water, or earth, or flame —
or something beyond even aether.