Sunset tears - John Kasaipwalova

The dancing wavetops poke their tongues
Laughing to cry their sadness
They swell to catch the painted sky
They bend to summon the blackness of the ocean depths
Always dancing, turning crisping fall and slide
The rainbow sea moving moving
Hasting to catch its passing sugar moments
The cockatoo plumes of the sliding wavy crests
Below the high noon sun are white
Yet in this sunsetting fall and cry
Tears of red and orange
Tears of colour.

The evening ocean breeze whispers softly
Between the spirited waters
And the extasied sky
Pulsing warm smiles from within itself
Caressing and making love by its felt unseen
To both the sky and the sea
Giving freely, invited freely knowing
Between the sea between the sky ……………. They love
The soft ocean breeze dissolving their separateness
Yet maybe the glowing sun ball
Distant and watching
Sinks unwilling to end its sunset tears.
In the breeze between the sky and the sea
Along the line of their meet
Across the blooded face of half sunk sun
One lonely ocean fisher bird flies
Toward the outer islands
My mother cried
My father cried
My uncles cried
Their wives cried
Their children cried
We cried our sunset tears
To see the bird spirit of our dead
Flying home to rest and dance.

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John Kasaipwalova (1949 - 2023) Papua New Guinea
Source: University of Sydney
From Hanuabada John Kasaipwalova Papua Pocket Poets (Port Moresby 1972)