Time out of time; then invaders come.
Caribs, from the Other Great Earth.
For untold suns, we keep to ourselves.
We plant the cassava, hunt the iguana.
We fish for the white-fleshed carite.
Our wars subside into rites of peace.
Now our cousins maraud like nightmares.
Friends by day, red-mawed ogres by night.
Forgotten twins, steeled and magnified.
Corded with sinews from slaying panthers.
From clubbing sharks, from plowing the sea.
Their swift canoes surprise us at dusk.
Their black hair dangles, slick with fat.
Anointed with smears of our blood.