Memories of Nausicaa

Sandblasted plains, kingdom of struggling grass,
reigned by irrepressible gale-force eruptions;
this wind has a voice, and it makes no excuses.

Sandworm cries echo the seven days of fire,
that transfigured the world, myriad wings
buzzing elegies to a torrid, infant cosmos.

There is a girl, her path transparent sunbeams,
she is the element of flight, dancing on
dusty showers like the first dawn.

Princess Messiah falls beneath the crust
into poison forests. Warrior gods rise,
from the primordial ooze. The universe ripples.

War against nature is elaborate suicide; as armies
clash, a single gull traces a shining arc above the slaughter,
an omen of the revolution; all voices cry out her name in unison:

Nausicaä,
burner of ships,
mother of metamorphosis:
the inundation of nascent light.