AL PURDY’S STAR WARS
— say the names
Tatooine and Dantooine
Alderaan and Hoth
Coruscant and Mustafar
Geonosis and Naboo
On Tattooine they were moisture farmers
scrap
dealers and smugglers
desert men with senses welded shut by the sand
wandering the dunes, Jawa and Jedi
dewback and
bantha
living on the
verge of their thirst
beyond the
Jundland Wastes
On Hoth they froze
in their bunks
toes curled
so black not even
light could escape
but with the sun they laboured
against an empire while their sweat
turned to ice and the Tauntauns and Wampas
remembered
an age of lizards
that basked long ago
in subcellular sleep
— say the names
Tatooine and Dantooine
Alderaan and Hoth
Dagobah and Mustafar
Geonosis and Jakku
not the guttural names of the Hutt in Huttese
but in the beep and chirr of
droids
in the startling whine
of a mynock
in an asteroid’s heart
On Dagobah the secret was kept
the darkness in the dark place that slumbered
in the thickness of its biomass
a long forgotten conscience
that roused to the laughter in the cave
— say the names
Dantooine and Tatooine
Hoth and Alderaan
Mustafar and Coruscant
Geonosis and Naboo
a
starfighter lands by the waterfall
in a hail of blaster fire
and
champions are fed to the wilds
of ceaseless appetite
and the
spies die like spies
and a lake of magma
boils and senators
vote on their own abolition
And Kashyyyk is distant and evergreen
And Mon Cala shines
like a disc-shaped orbital sea
There are drums that sound in the forest
a city that
waits in the clouds
forgotten
worlds
forgotten
republics
a family
scattered by war
and
reunited in the stars
And Alderaan remembered.
