"Seven Worlds" (2015) by Gary Bu0e, St. Lucia.
After Melissa Green
The applause of city lights, casual coffees in bookshops
packed, sleek auditoriums and you at the rostrum,
coveted blurbs sign your beautiful editions –
comes the grey heron
through your eyes, its low, swift slide to the wet sand
and the irrevocable, eternal edge of surf, tumbling.
Continents under rails and routes of your camaraderie
argot of champions skirting sink-holes of envy
exuberant joy in the gossiping of friends –
soughing casuarinas
murmuring wood-doves, alarum of the red-breasted scissor-tail
over a rumour of sharks, pretend to fill the silence of their absence.
Encroaching decrepitude, terrifying, occasional amnesia
lungs and heart lurching to wheeze and raking cough
paranoid insomniac –
like sleep it comes when it comes, and though
as in dreams, you are here but there, so like a trip to Boston
you will be there, really there, dreaming here, on some unutterable artery of a
thoroughfare.
Translation
for Pat Ismond 1944–2006
Were your life and work
simply a good translation?
– Derek Walcott, ‘The Prodigal’
A translation, Derek, of a kind of odyssey?
Of how I passed and am passing
through this island town
parish of an archipelago nation,
crafting canticles of what I see
metaphors to chant in Kwéyòl melodies
of applauding hordes of surf
cresting the ample bosoms of bays,
of hills smoked blue by early light
and haze of charcoal pits,
of violons, improbable chak-chak benedictions
and chantwelle cantors
with voices like rough-edged, trust-worthy clay;
and the familiar grid of the familiar
city, its streets gossiping memories
of our indiscretions,
small victories, voyages
deaths and divorces
our little books in which they find their lovely names
– not forgetting the journey-man dreams:
republic of arts, theatres and galleries
in pleasant parks and gardens,
the public purse a guarantee
for young painters, dancers, actors,
veterans not neglected
exiled to bitterness and debt –
what do they mean, the life and work
50 years of hours, days and weeks
learning from you and other masters
the magic of line-making
stitching of stanzas strong
to hold the sly wind of shifting
currents of turning image,
to fish exact nouns with nets flung
at sea-deep roots of our languages,
to handle with care the temperamental conjugations
of verbs that steer our raft and baggage
with stern resolve to some inlet of temporary refuge?
So what is the odyssey,
who is the meaning of this journey –
what signify names of dead lovers
distant friends, dried-up rivers
unknown end of narrow streets
in unfamiliar villages and hamlets
small town fame and passing interest
of the world outside, chapbooks of ambitious verse
forgotten columns and reviews
that stirred forgotten controversies –
this life that presses on
under bird song in the mangoes
crickets in the dark hill, threat of storm, tremblor at 3,
the so-so job, certain faith, safe family
the working of the word
the working of the irrepressible word –
how do they translate?
Pathfinder
for Kamau Brathwaite at 85
Where are the open spaces now
clear sky, the stars, horizons’ distances?
– KB, ‘Masks’
We looked with you pathfinder
into great halls, high spheres
of the seven kingdoms,
and you sang our lives
to memory
before the Golden Stool was lost
when we had our names
and names of the gods
and wombs of strong trees
were oracles under the skin of our hands.
From islands’ scorned syllables
your horn lifted nations’ new tongues
Castries to Kingston
Brixton to Brooklyn
Axum to Kumasi
as they now are. And it
it is now
now the Times of Salt
the age of griots archived
their heads hung in dark corners
their songs obsolete as vinyl
while ballheads of Babylon
deconstruct themselves
over abysses of mockery;
but children
who have not genuflected to Baal
who have remembered again
whom you name from the drum-
beating of your love
come, come, come
with oil of coconut,
bread of cassava, gooseberry wine,
tablets of fruit of your word, Kamau.
After Dionne Brand
A Glosa Variation
all I can offer you now though is my brooding hand,
my sodden eyelashes and the like,
these humble and particular things I know,
my eyes pinned to your face.
– Dionne Brand, ‘Inventory’
I.
I must tell you how moved I was
astonished, perhaps like the wind’s castanets in palms
outside my window, like the chak-chak of shells
under the interfering proddings of surf –
how you drew me close, yes, to brimming
over your so-unexpected full-veined
lines that were the archetypal echo
humming under my breath
and, indeed, here you were Brand –
all I can offer you now though is my brooding hand,
II.
parsing your notations, perusing your inventory
of our blasted days, Aleppo now
and then Nice and yesterday Orlando
tomorrow Laventille again, Trench Town recurrent
Richmond Hill impossible to forget –
ossuaries, yes, of failed states and their politricks
babies broken on beaches, Mediterranean
drowned in overladen caravels
our islands’ doomed alleys mocking
my sodden eyelashes and the like –
III.
exhausting, these post-modern certainties
no truth, no meaning, no author
no beauty I suppose in the old songs of remembering
upon drum, string and bones
dimpled laugh of the old woman who loves you
long arms of the dancer from San Fernando
sacramental light rimming the ends of sunsets
languid cruising of scissor-tailed seabirds
through our horizons, reading a fine poet from Toronto –
these humble and particular things I know,
IV.
add thresholds of jalousied doorways I crossed
pursuing mystery love, drawn even then by the echo
quivering on metronomes of evening softnesses
to find faith waiting in lines of dread-locked canticles
pointing couplets of dark sayings
terrible chapters of mighty prophecies –
anyway, like some minor April epiphany
am downtown Port of Spain, corner Hart & Abercromby
and you reading, tenderly, at Bocas
my eyes pinned to your face
John Robert Lee (b. St. Lucia 1948) has published several collections of poetry. His short stories and poems have been widely anthologised. His reviews and columns have appeared with regularity in newspapers, local and regional. He has also produced and presented radio and television programmes in St. Lucia for many years. His books include Saint Lucian (1988), Artefacts (2000), Canticles (2007), Elemental (2008), Sighting (2013), City Remembrances (2016), and Song and Symphony (2016). He compiled and edited Roseau Valley and other poems for Brother George Odlum (2003), Bibliography of Saint Lucian Creative Writing 1948-2013 (2013); he co-edited Saint Lucian Literature and Theatre: an anthology of reviews (2006) with fellow St. Lucian poet Kendel Hippolyte and co-edited Sent Lisi: poems and art of Saint Lucia (2014) with Kendel Hippolyte, Jane King and Vladimir Lucien. His Collected Poems 1975-2015 is now available from Peepal Tree Press.