NATIVE VISION: Ode to the Spirit and Native Soul

by Walter Alfredo Martinez (1948-2006)

*This poem was written by my late father, who died 18 years ago this month on the Spring Equinox. He was born in Honduras, died in Santa Monica.

The accompanying art is a collage I just finished in his honor. It is an original mixed media collage illustration, by Sylvia Marina Martinez.

Dearest one . . . So you have disappeared 
So you have gone and left me 
Here on usurped holy lands 
And desecrated burial grounds 
You have gone and left me dear 
Like the wisp of blue smoke 
Lost in the firmament 
You have gone and left me dear 
Graced by your mystical designs

Dearest one . . . So you have disappeared 
So you have gone and left me 
Here on the crumbling ramparts 
Of an expiring Twentieth Century 
Crisscrossing the twisted mind 
Immersed in the tortured soul 
Of a dismembered and proliferating humanity!

Here down the streets 
Made of asphalt and glass 
In a great uproar of steel and cement 
And an endless onslaught 
Of faces and noises and voices 
That rush through the vortex 
Of my confused and bloody historical roots 
Of my uprooted and hysterical drunk life 
The song of this wandering half-breed 
Tortured poisoned mangled half-blind 
Is like the Eagle guiding the Swan 
To the majestic arch of your brow

Dearest one . . . So you have disappeared 
So you have gone and left me 
Like the trickle of a weary river 
Lost in the blue vastness of the sea 
You have gone and left me dear

All alone I have dwelled In your moist soiled darkness 
All alone I have awaited In the spiraling echoes 
Of your sweet conch shell 
Circumscribed by the noble trade route 
Of your glorious and clandestine enterprise

Dearest one . . . Here almost five hundred years after 
Veni vidi vici shifted you place 
In a great realignment of fate 
In a thunderous a clash of blood 
And songs and semen for land 
In and out of the ever darkest of ages 
Your warriors once again people this land 
Like stars the sky in the wake of the sun 
And like an omniscient comet 
Caressing my face in the darkness 
Your voyaging soul passes through mine 
Above our tenuous and tortured bloodline 
Past the inexorable historical deadline 
Of our true Manifest Destiny: 
To mingle beneath and nourish this land 
With our blood and our war weary bones 
And to bloom like shoots of the sun 
In festive song of corn water and lime

Dearest one . . . So you have disappeared 
So you have gone and left me 
In your trails of tears and blood 
Rivers of flowers and love songs! 
You have gone and left me dear 
Blessed by your mystical chants

Oh in time in time I will dance 
And I will sing with clarity 
Like an exalted Indian Ablaze in the skies!

My long feather headdress 
And my lovingly painted face 
Like the fan of the luminous peacock 
Will span forth to the four corners of the night!

And yes the serpent will grow wings 
And it will uncoil itself in the desert dust 
And it will recoil itself in the azure skies 
For your arrowhead to strike its bullseye 
And then form the great arch to your house 
And once again you will distribute 
The sweet fruits of these lands 
Like the rivers distribute the earth 
That flows to nourish the source of this life 
That rose from the grace of the sea 
To depart through your wistful pupil 
In a distant reflection of magic and bliss ...