I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.
In these lines, the speaker brings up one of history's famous men, inventor and diver Jacques Costeau. In a poem about unearthing history, she notes that men like Costeau have always had the benefit of a team—of others who support their cause financially and materially. As a female explorer, she is on her own in uncharted waters. This relates to the theme of the erasure of women.
I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
These lines establish that the “wreck” is in fact the wreck of written history. The words written in this history are “purposes”: they were chosen with a specific purpose and intent. Moreover, they are “maps”: they lead both towards the conclusions their authors intended, as well as all that they tried to erase. In these lines, the speaker emphasizes her single-minded intent to explore that wreck, finding out the truth that exists hidden within it.
We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.
The final lines of the poem describe the shipwreck “the scene,” almost comparing it to the scene of a crime. Using the pronoun “we,” the speaker seeks to build a community of all those who find themselves contemplating the ills of history—whether or not they consider themselves brave. They all carry the three symbols that appear throughout the poem—the camera, the knife, and the book of myths—in order to guide them on their mission. Although “their names do not appear” in the books, they are collectively engaged in re-examining and rewriting these myths.
