"My heart heaves, herds-long…"
– Gerard Manley Hopkins, "No Worse,
There is None"
Same old El Dorado hook, find oil generators
same caciqui Raleigh premise, land and lords of gold.
The dray cart
bony death trot. Shades of grass that fail to warn as one
eyed reptiles uncoil time to mate.
No morning prayers, out of
nowhere Crow & Co. in day clean amber hold.
Just the dowry bed rule wish to have
you ̶ brace display stare out at starry starry nights, the moon
in hand grip earth lock; vows breeding in. Your navel
ring lustre up for this, peasant bride?
First secretaries lean to pitch the heed, proof cleavage
read, as blade strips cane leaves pity pleats on window
dress; on forest feathers city crown dust sin positioning;
the alphabet dilapidated sites.
What horse sense could resist the feed
bags in office treasure? the transfer > flight track shape
shift lift to grouse nests in, click, a maple leaf fall free state?
learn to curl limb eat brick cold, stuff loss you can write
songs about.
The word
webbed frog leap over muddles, cycles back and forth on
old plantation grids; not miles, teeth grinds to go before
the pedals stutter: whose net worth's caste?
The fear
down floating creek black water deep as Kaie falls
bush in master river bending: whose heart caves beak
craves darkness?
Patria! is so they roll. Hasta Siempre so we fold.
– W.W.
TO A COLONIST
You slant by and I know you
as someone who is what he
knows, something so certain it
has no notion of itself,
no name, no voice, only mask
of itself as a man with name
and words to say to other
ghosts whose maskness makes you wince
in despair of blind false fools.
You know too much not to be
hiding all hints of yourself
behind your wall of stone facts
by which you try to limit
the world of the mind to your
golden models of a past
a stigma in your eye bright
with anger for a world stained
by your own shadowed vision.
But arrogance is excused
by neither experience nor
ignorance nor innocence.
We either surrender pride
or flag our stones to ragged
fire; either grant stone is smoke
or rage till smoke it proves us
when easy all its walls fall
as hard as we believe them.
(from "Fabula Rasa" by Brian Chan)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 