This was an assignment I had for a poetry writing class I took.  It was to write a long poem (long in this case being over 50 lines) in two parts (well, to be handed in in two parts anyways) about your personal history and/or the history of either the place where you are from or the place you are living now.  Stupid assignment, I know.  But when I sat down to write it, somehow this image stuck in my head of my father's house, sort of the same image I had when I had to write the assignment for "Alexandra/Ersiqaxe," from which I took the sea and the wind imagery from all the moonlit nights I spent overlooking the islands and the golf course.  It represents something for me that I still can't quite comprehend fully, other than perhaps to say a place of serenity and tranquility and harmony with the world.  I dunno.  Anyhow, so I had this image of me sitting on that small balcony, and so I started writing about that.  And then, tying in with the history thing, I started thinking about what it would have been like for the indigenous people who lived there, would they have found that same serenity there under that same moon and with those same islands that I could see?  And from that, the rest of it exploded, and I thought about the various places on the island, like Drake's seat, where allegedly he would sit to watch for other ships to see who he could pirate, or Fort Christian, which is the oldest building there and has been at various times various things but always a symbol.  And then I thought of what it must have been like for all the people throughout history who lived there before me.  The slaves, for instance.  Big part of the history, and something I wanted to address also.  And I thought also of stories my father would tell me of his own youth and how they seemed so long ago and how things were so much different then, as though the island were just then being settled and had nothing yet.  But mostly I wanted to give the impression of how things change, but they really don't at the same time, and how it all in the end adds up to the children who are born of these things.  I might not ever have known all the things that went on, but I am affected by them because it's in my history, like it or not.  And by the way, gades are streets in Danish.