In geography of ferment,

wind and rollers and gull-empty cries

carried off the broad edge

of Africa--

unremembered country of

salt-marsh,

scrub jungle, tropical fugue--

break

on the bright crescent of coral,

continental in its dimensions,

lost Atlantis,

damned Eden of languorous rhythms

and cyclopsian storms--

pleasures and terrors,

desire and anguish

in excess of all measure--

cumuli,

thunderheads,

sibling-bred in submarinal caves

of the South Atlantic.

Cradle of gold,

cradle of blood,

cradle of ravishing promise

and ravaged dream.

These stones may mark

the great holy place

of the Ciboney,

for whom the sun and moon

were equal lights,

each as dreadful

as the Judaic God.

These stones do compel us

to remember this people

who vanished

without record of the cause.

These stones may mark

a great convulsion

of tectonic plates,

or stand as a testament

to several millennia

of all degrees of rain

and South Atlantic wind.

In either instance,

these stones do compel us

to consider how little

we leave with our passing

and how much of ourselves

that small portion may be.

To this spot, forty Carib fled

not much ahead of the French,

who had determined once and for all

to clear the island.

In the faces of the Carib

showed the wild emotions

that take hold

in the whorl of slaughter:

rage, defiance, and the grimace

of lurching despair.

But not disbelief.

Not disbelief.

These were warriors

conditioned to the prospect

of their own violent ends,

and yet they fled

because nothing was to be gained

by being cut down where they stood.

Then, here, at the head

of these cliffs,

because nothing was to be gained

by facing the musket and machete,

they threw themselves over.

And the French who rushed

to where the Carib had stood

looked down upon the rocks

and felt each by degrees

the hollowing of self

that is what remains

in the wake of such slaughter.

The stones from which the oldest homes were built

were brought from Dorset--as ballast.

Later, there was less need merely to fill the holds,

as West Africans were brought by the hundreds

to work the cane plantations.

Places like the old Gallway Estate

were constructed on the proceeds of their cyclic toil.

Then, with emancipation, the fine homes

were abandoned to the trade winds and tropical rains,

and the siding, woodwork, and great beams

in succession melted away like hardened sugar.

The freedmen likewise drifted to other Antilles

and even farther destinations,

and in the places of slaves and cane fields

were planted the long rows of lime trees.

Now, in the early spring, in the air light

with the fragrance of their white flowers,

the sailing ships return, restored as spirits

as frail as last sunlight, their sails untattered

and their decks washed clean of torment.

I pass among the tombs

set above ground

within view

of the white beach,

and in the sea rhythms

of the warm breeze,

I feel the tenuous presence

of the long-deceased,

the unremembered.

Some died, no doubt,

in dank delirium;

others, with the cold

clarity of vision

that sometimes comes

in the late hours

of prolonged fever.

Some died, no doubt,

with a degree of relief,

found either in a faith

sustained or one recovered,

or in exhaustion;

others, with the anguish

of disbelief, the spirit's

revulsion at the Judas-

kiss of the flesh.

Many died at birth;

many others, in giving birth.

A glorious few

and notorious others

fell to musketball,

cutlass, and their own

miscalculations.

Some drowned;

more, no doubt, in rum

or in unflagging sorrow.

In the end, it is no matter

and all that matters.

For in the salt-white tombs,

one sees the space

that the dead take up,

though reduced to bone

and then to something

much less than bone.

In the wind-flattened

letters and dates,

one confronts

the anonymity of a name

isolated first from flesh

and then from memory.

There comes an intimation

of the centuries of bones,

of the uncountable

allotments of hours,

without even stones

to mark their passing.

Here, on the highest promontory

north of the Grenadines,

the British built this fortress.

Massive blocks of stone were hauled

out of the inland hills,

and great cannon were set in place

to command the sea in three directions.

Napoleon was then the scourge of Europe,

and no Englander, no matter

how far removed from the march and clash

of great armies, felt secure.

But, here, the cannon never fired.

Since Waterloo, the heavy walls

have withstood several hurricanes--

winds more fearsome

than any French armada.

But much more often than not,

even such storms have spun on a path

across the islands farther to the north.

For a time, this fortress

was used as a sort of holding cell

for paupers and lepers,

impoverishment being then as loathsome

as the breathing specter of decay.

Above Castries

rises the Hill of Good Luck.

Indeed, the city is a vision

of prosperity.

Buildings with clean, modern lines

sit along broad streets

with names that find their music

on the Creole tongue--

Laborie, Micoud, Bourbon, and Brazil.

Here, there is very little "history"

except in the faces and voices

carried as if in measure with the tide

seaward and inland

on the John Compton highway.

Little "history," that is,

unless history is the story

of relentless beginnings:

for Castries is a city

of many cities,

two destroyed by hurricane

and four by fire.

As the spring of 1902

drifted over Martinique,

St. Pierre swam in the heady

mix of blooming hibiscus,

anthurium and frangipani,

flamingo flowers and orchids.

This "Paris of the Indies"

lay between the lush mountains

and the crystalline waters

like the promise of the best

of the new century.

But to Siparis, in his cell

deep beneath the prefecture,

one season bled into the next

as surely and distantly

as day into night.

And so, when the trembling began

to run through the ground

as thunder stripped of its sound

might still reverberate the air,

he was not reassured

by the luxury of the warm breeze.

As the weeks passed, some

did notice that the wild pigs,

the snakes, the parrots, and even

the butterflies had deserted

the slopes of Mont Pelee,

and, as word of this spread,

plumes of steam did begin,

almost reluctantly it seemed,

to sputter from the peak.

If most were concerned,

none was willing to admit alarm.

And so, when the peak blew off,

the whole town of thirty thousand

was buried in mere minutes

under a huge cloud of hot ash

that rose and then collapsed,

as though the great explosion

had been followed by a more

terrible implosion.

Through all of this, Siparis

stood in the corner of his cell,

singly alive in his cubicle of air.

To the hill of the white lion

came the worst casualties of the Great War,

young men so horribly maimed

that their failure to perish was deemed

a hard burden on the home and nation.

To the hill of the white lion

came men who had lost the greater part of their limbs

or all of their function

(whether due to trauma to the brain or spine

or as a consequence of attenuated

survival--atrophy signaling exhaustion

of the store of recovery).

To the hill of the white lion

came men missing not just eyes or ears, nose or lips,

but whole portions of their facial bones and skulls--

men whose heads had lost their human aspect,

whose sounds rose directly from their opened throats

as though strangled out of those doomed but still running,

pitching themselves face down into the flooded craters.

To the hill of the white lion

came men whose organs had been torn and ruptured

and then pieced and stitched together

in such a manner that their fluids

had lost their course

and had to be drawn off through tubes

to collect in bags clipped to bedpost and rail.

From the hill of the white lion,

the green land rolled away in each direction,

washed in the slow circuit of sunlight,

then dressed in the filaments of moonbeams

reflecting from the tremulous sea.

From the hill of the white lion,

the caskets were gathered at dawn

and carried down to the graveyard stretching

to the brief escarpment,

where the gulls circled through the seasons,

where the names on the stones faced east

and took the continuous kiss of trans-Atlantic air.

Can this be Cuba?

asks the drunkard,

who goes below deck

to puke himself back

to his old rage.

The raw whiskey smell

cuts into the rank smoke

of cheaper cigars.

The oily odor of fish

and the sweet odor of old oil

drift from the hard creases

of the pilot's hands.

In the motor's thick rhythm

sounds the labor of slow passage,

the suggestion of some brute

discontent rising from depths

as dark as lost forests,

oil oozing from sands

that have borne

the weight of oceans.

Can this be Cuba?

asks the old woman whose husband

was the drunkard's father.

The thin line of hills

on the gray horizon

seems meager, even foreign--

like the young man looking

out of the tattered photo,

who, after decades

of passionate remembering,

has become somehow less familiar,

as if he were the brother-in-law

she had not met,

the one who had died even younger,

years before their first kiss.

The night before,

their son had said:

"If there is no grave,

there'll be nothing left to bury."

She had struck him,

and he had said that he was sorry,

that it was the whiskey talking,

and then she struck him again

for that more terrible untruth.

Plywood painted dark blue,

visible brush strokes--

thick white letters

done by hand

ROAD WORK AHEAD

top-heavy palm trees,

shards of sunlight,

ringed bark,

trunks burden-curved

like the backs

of three dark men

in yellow hard hats--

GO SLOW--

ROAD ROLLER

AT WORK

coral dust

dirtied by traffic,

shadowed faces glistening,

a glimpse of blunt eyes,

bare torsos,

trousers gone loose

with long labor,

shoes as heavy as old sorrow

tied halfway up the tongues.

Gasoline-smell, machine idling.

Handwave to pass.

Riding in the Impala

built nine or ten years

after I was born--

the pale pink dust

on my fingertips

from the bleached paint

of the fender--

we gain on the white bus

trailing blue smoke,

black grime rain-streaked

across the rear door

and rear-edge of the roof.

Wilson points ahead--

"The Church peoples."

I nod, find myself

watching the skirt

of gold thread

on the dashboard hula doll.

A woman seated

at the back of the bus

turns her face to the glass.

Stares at me.

Mouths something.

Wilson is looking out

at the high scrub,

smiles enough to show

the big, silver fillings

in his molars.

"Not to worry," he says.

"The Church peoples

be farming this.

Next turn soon.

Then we make quick time."

In Arizona,

dancing for tourists

is business.

I found next to me

a woman from Bridgeport

who assured me in a whisper

louder than most voices

that the costumes

and the dancers' movements

were quite authentic.

Later, as I sat at the end

of the long porch

of the trading post,

I watched as she

and a very thin man

wearing green-plaid golfing pants

and a white Stetson

kicked up dust

on the way to their Pontiac.

I overheard her say,

"Everything is overpriced--

as if everyone's a tourist."

Here, on Dominica,

there are no costumes

or dances--nothing

with the postcard grandeur

of adobe walls.

Indeed, the Carib look like

impostors--

"like regular sp--s,"

as the retired machinist

complains to the Creole guide.

In their faded shirts and pants,

they look like what they are,

poor fishermen and farmers--

some of whom have retained

the spirit that moves

the carver's hands.

In my hand, the carved female figure

feels as cool and smooth

as any dream of flesh--

that is, the wood feels as though

several generations of hands

have rubbed the fine edges from its grain--

that is, it feels as authentic

as anyone trading dollars for it

has any right to expect.

In Salibia, the altar

in the Roman Catholic Church

was fashioned from a Carib canoe,

which itself had been carved

from a carefully chosen

coconut palm, which itself

owed its existence to seeds

carried on the trade winds

from the western reaches of Africa.

In each curiosity,

there are ironies within ironies,

simple continuities

as paradoxical as a long survival

out of a great extermination.

At first, the eyes

have room for nothing

but sky and water,

the broad mix of blues

marking the vague limits

of great motions.

Then the eyes fix

on the flowers,

on hues so dense

that the petals

seem ready to ooze

at the mere intimation

of touch.

One has to settle in

before the greens

attract each glance

and hold it

with all the tropic

store of passion:

leaves the color

of lizard, parrot,

and teal,

of cucumber and avocado,

pistachio, lime,

and mint,

of celadon and bice,

beryl, bay,

and tourmaline,

of cadmium, jade,

and emerald--

shades to wear

the names

of many Adams,

from absinthe

to verdigris.

On Antigua, the place names

have a romantic air,

suggesting the sudden show

of sails on the line of sky and water,

the flash of musket and cutlass,

officers polished and pressed

and cutthroat buccaneers,

the neat ambition of planters

and the grim terrors of slaves--

English Harbour, Boon Point,

Beggar's Point, and Runaway Beach,

Rendezvous Bay, Boggy Point,

Deepwater Harbour, and Half Moon Bay.

Thirty miles north on smaller Barbuda,

history has few pretensions,

and the place names suggest imaginations

reduced by a brutal monotony

of sun and wind and sea, by the steady

drift of wreckage from the reefs--

Goat Point, Hog Point, Low Bay,

and Two Foot Bay.

Here, instead of Nelson's Dockyards,

the sole historic landmark

is Martello Tower--

the rubble of a lighthouse

that the Spaniards may have built,

and if not them, then someone else.

Three nationalities of Europeans

have called it "eel island"--

not an especially euphonious name

but topographically accurate.

Though the thirty beaches are beautiful--

wide and white and uncrowded,

and washed by ocean that is as clear as gin--

they will put a man alone asleep,

and a fair-skinned man who sleeps on a beach

in these latitudes

is either a fool or steady drinker.

So I kept a stool at Roy's and, while nursing

the English beer, found myself listening

to a bone-thin lady with a face like a walnut

and a mouth stretched loose by years of disgust.

It was she who mentioned the lost Dutch fort

(not to be confused with the ruins

of the small British fort at Sandy Hill Bay).

So early the next morning I set off on foot

toward the east end of the island

where the roads are ruts through the scrub

and the lizards race ahead of footfalls

across the white margins of saltwater ponds.

It is a desolate place and, like most places

avoided by natives, witheringly monotonous.

As the sun climbed, I began to imagine mirages--

that is, though not at the point of actually

seeing mirages, I tried to visualize

how the heat rising from the poor ground

might form into visions of snow-fed lakes

at the foot of the Adirondacks.

I finally found a half-shaded space

at the edge of one of the thirty beaches

and waited for mercy.

Near mid-afternoon a very fat man in a new jeep

waved me under the canvas roof

and offered me a drink from a thermos of Gatorade.

When I told him about the fort, he let out

a single, deep laugh and said, "That may be so.

That may be so."

I sit just inside the open door

of Beano's tea shop,

my back to the narrow space

of yellow wall,

between the pale orange door frame

and the broad storefront window.

Beyond the streaky glass,

all of the movement of Rincon Street

heightens the passion for story--

the impulse to see in each expression,

posture, and gesture

the very moment in which is revealed

the tension that bends the edges of a life

like the slight imperfection

wavering toward the center of the glass.

It is exhausting

and never quite satisfying,

like dancing with one extraordinarily beautiful

woman and then another and another and another

all night long

until all one wants to do is go home

and drop into bed and dream.

And so I close my eyes

and, like the proverbial blind man,

I am released to smell and sound:

the music in phrases that has very little

to do with dialect,

the words that are left unfinished

or not uttered

or adrift in the surge of another voice,

the overlay of mechanical racket,

the signature sounds of vehicles

and the odd grunt and squawk of livestock,

the smells of charcoal, coconuts,

coffees, bananas, and green peppers,

fish and fried chicken,

the thick sweetness of soda syrup and

the pervasive scent of Old Spice,

the sizzle of cooking fat

and the slow burn of dark cigars.

It is like slow dancing with a woman

who moves with subtle passions,

whose hair holds hints of her work and home.

Back