The Earthmen come to my bedside
because I am the last
and there is no one else
to dance and sing for me.
It is so right, the sound,
the intonation, the grief
in their chanting, I forget—
almost—that I taught them
each to speak their alphabets,
the once and ancient way
we have done everything.
There are no children of my blood
because I have failed under the eye
of history to make a family
with another fullblood,
the wrong desires, wrong genes.
The children of my breath sing
and sing as though we had not gone
before them, as if tomorrow
there would still be beauty
in the islands to sing about.
Of course: the beach at Tuara,
the snow of Kek Auna, always
the surf against the rocks,
always the royalty out dancing.
The land has made us what we are.
Islands empty of us,
do my people still remain
in the slow-limbed, short-throated,
cold bodies who traveled here from Earth?