The Citizen

 

By David Jordan

I swear these long nights

Stir my blood

And steer my spirit northward

Like a long boat headed home.

 

For the imagination feeds

On the darkness like a flame

And tonight I imagine myself as

A man of the North:

Cross countenance, long bones.

Leaping on to the sandy shore.

 

Bringing alien gods to the natives:

The loquacious Gael.

The nature loving, melancholy,

Aristocratic Gael.

 

After a thousand years

Surely the stranger is gone from the house?

 

Tonight, I swear I am a citizen

Of the imagination:

Emancipated.

In flight.