The country of your body

A thousand times I have travelled
Across the country of your body,
Its rounded hills and verdant valleys,
Shadowed corners concealed from the casual tourist,
Its highways curving around peaks
And losing their way in the stormy sea,
Its villages and towns
Each with a million stories to recount.

A thousand times I have traced
The strange contours of its borders,
Brittle as a glasspane and still
Supple like the gently swaying palms,
Languidly moving from place to place
In a journey of exploration,
A solitary cartographer striving to imprison
Its map in the quicksand of memory.

A thousnd times I have stood
Poised at its gates, returning again
--And yet again--
A migrant soul seeking the solace
Of a home on unfamiliar shores,
And making a country--alien once--
Forever his own.