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Various Instructions for Translating Your Past

To make the lost person’s location become known
forget nothing of the field & see that you were wrong
As in no field
                          no exilic 
                                                 no arcticality
                                                                                no longer a knot of inexplicable pain
As in
           make no light & list the misunderstandings to leave
           unresolved as the snow disappears 
           & lest you trample 
                      at the brink of a public abyss
                      see sura & suġat, & the boy who was surprised 
                      when we rolled to a stop in Siqnazuaq— 
                      he thought the land a long way off 
When we had access to the same facts
            we had access to the same language 
                                      before he made a wound of political declension &
                                      before we knew what it was to have evacuated our island
                         our story	    & series of syllables 		
            before we wanted anything so dangerously that we went back 
                         to invent it again 
To make the song 
                                            go up to the mountains 
or out on the sea until we no longer have to refuse 
the help of a people who continue to want us dead