Two Cranial Murals

Raised against the green
morning, the lodestone
landmark pulls us to it:
our eyes on the hill,
we have to get there
somehow. Three snipers
lasso us in a silver
crossfire, singing out
our names like hornets.
The red pawn
is our last move--
green & yellow squares
backdropped with mangrove
swamps, against all
feeling left naked,
something to hold to. Hand
over hand, following frayed
invisible rope to nowhere,
we duck walk through
the tall blooming grass
& nose across the line
of no return. Remnants
of two thatch huts stand,
half trembling to the heavy
sound of running feet,
luteous against the day.
We make it to the hill,
fall down & slide rounds
into the mortar tube;
smithereens of light
& leaf debris cover
the snipers. Unscathed,
with arms hooked through each other's,
like men on some wild
midnight-bound carousel,
in our joy, we kick
& smash the pagoda
till it's dried blood
covering the ground.

Yusef Komunyakaa is the author of twelve books of poems, including Talking Dirty to the Gods (2000); Thieves of Paradise (1998), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems 1977-1989 (1994), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Dien Cai Dau (1988), which won The Dark Room Poetry Prize; I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head (1986), winner of the San Francisco Poetry Center Award; and Pleasure Dome: New & Collected Poems, 1975-1999. A decorated Vietnam veteran, Komunyakaa recently received the 2001 Ruth Lilly Prize. He serves as a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets and is currently a professor in the Council of Humanities and Creative Writing Program at Princeton University.

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