“To be the child of wretched ambition …of desired
greatness, the child of paradise, hell.”
Wilson Harris, Companions of the Day
and Night” (1975)
Measured by traders in the chamber deadly
so . any spark could trigger panic chutes as out
of reach squeeze gaps appear | manners we deserve,
the blinds we’d recurve . Look at us now!
Here's a prospector's lunch splash I have crossed so
many rivers cutting up his meat; his paddle blade on tax
holiday – felling trees; mineral pit composting
earth like sacrifice after the hunt.
There’s a Starbucks in our City Mall; escalator
up from roadside hang stalls housing others | sip;
cradle each moustache cup, pot luck steaming
like from teeth ‘n’ nail care; pesticide alert
mute.
^
Test the island line extensions – from our Naipaul’s
Negros, “hair done in little pigtails, a Medusa
head” | not root threatening, though fear from all
reports like asphalt wavy in the heat.
How Hardutt ramps
Yuh muddah cunt! Who you think U R? marks
plantation carrier, latter day device; chest wall
safe ‘n’ wells performing | home land pending.
– W.W.
I SAY
A man does not talk out of the back of his head,
and true books are not birthed from frightened shadows’ wombs
nor out of the cracks in the cliff-climbing of past
tyrants whose hungry ghosts demand they be filled in,
but from ‘a feeling about the world which creates
a need that nothing satisfies’ except essays
at ‘the final poem of fact in the language
of fact not realised before’, of an Ireland,
say, that, green as it is, grows ‘greener than it is’
- for unwittingly containing green Guianas
as well as they always bore their own green Others.
…………………………….
……………………..
(from “Readiness” by Brian Chan, 2013)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 