Name me a player in the colony eleven (chain round the neck
not yet gold) who didn't pray to be chosen:
a calabash shower, his chance
to dress up in cricket whites and perform
on the green with the willow. Mark
the padded walk (the boys copy that) his trickster runs, the googlies –
our saviour-gladiator! like Havana's commandante, nailing
boundaries our side of the world.
These days he's the man at the UN podium, in never wrinkles blue suit;
the centurion! sprig in lapel for the greenheart forest.
With a swamp's grasp of Parfum he clutches words, he speaks
for our trees and river dwellers who never once complained
of regime change, not once the plunder of stillness. To the myth-
hugging dreamers in libraries, the loin cloth swimmers up creeks
Cha-ching! he'll go, Cha-ching!
Tomorrow he could be our 1st man in space, all spiffy
in orange launch suit, si senor! Waving to the people
via stadium telecast, knowing their toes will wiggle
in the mud as his shuttle or ship lifts off – lifts
from tightpacked bodies, poor facing forward lean; row
upon row going O mi god! at that up
pushingfuelburnbillow at the base.
Prince of appearances, a player…Howzzat?
"progressive"? "delusional"? "grandstanding"?
Ah, merde!
Here comes the skipper, who's up?
-W.W.
IRONY
is the voice of challenge, a backed-up sewer's:
when your drains run silent, that's when they're breeding
the promise of your next plague whose eggs of sleep
with this last straw I break so that their dark lice,
clinging to it, might float up and be exposed.
(from "Scratches on the Air" by Brian Chan)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 