Goulet.pdf

Duncan Earle

the text, let the world learn something about what mistakes tell those
who listen. A way to wrap all these lessons into a bundle, texts.

Journey’s Path

I started out trying to help those who seemed obviously in need. But
they were gentle on me, despite colonialism, and let me see gradually,
despite my resistance, how differently I would have to be and under-
stand what was before me, to know even the first thing to do, the first
thought in the pathway of help, the first question to not even ask, the
first move in any planning procedure. So I was the one come to study
with and from them; they would send me back seeing where to walk,
where to fly. I would meet those in flight, over the border in the heat
of Chiapas, then, and write about it, another text of exodus. They
came to meet those who had left the tiny plots of Altos traditional life
to colonize the jungle frontier, there they mixed, there they worked,
some went back, some stayed. I came back. I continued north, to the
border with the United States.

Home Made

I have made full circle. From dogs and homes and time in Guatema-
la, to seeking shelter away in new lands, new homes, back toward
home with those in migration, finally to the meeting place where bleak
mountains ring the pass of interior history, of royal roads and west-
ward rails, the end of the Rockies and the start of the Mother moun-
tains, where the edges bleed not into the pitiful ditch of our separa-
tion, but across all walls of it into the veins of our breath, our thirsty
cells and bushes, here in the desert where the path to cross now awaits
the hungry for work, the thirsty for a living wage, dodging death, now
the Mayas head for where the anthropologist hides out writing, and
I watch them getting on the Southwest Eagle nonstop to Phoenix,
tossing them a tamale mas for the road. I return south to those who
have not left, return to the spiraling movement of the caracol manda-
la, to the heartlands of the Zapatistas, to help in consulting on help-
ing, answering needs, asking questions, listening and talking, watch-