They stood dumb beneath the beetling jungle
in black Chuck Taylors and white t-shirts

come to preach across the bridge less waters
at a buckle in the brown Curaray.

These Americans call the place Palm Beach,
address its people with a Quechua slur.

Over the river on the opposite shore
Benjamin Whorf attempts to deliver a message.

Slowed by the air his words decompose,
break into original utterance and primitive sound.

They float like the yellow Piper aircraft
that descends through the Neolithic into Ecuador.

Reformed as the remote Aramaic of Jesus
they assemble into gospels of approximate myth.

The Huaorani men will kill these missionaries
then strip the Piper’s wings of fabric.

They’ll circle that artifact on the sand,
its frame laid bare in formal relief.

Together they will thicken syllables into song
into the hidden figures of their memories

into what sounds old whenever they sing
word for word what no radio transmits.