ABSTRACT
Clearer now, in this state of darkness, the several pieces in the one, that across the intervening years, I owe to each what I have become. There is no news of the self. In the power station, huge turbines sit silent as the water drips. In my name, St. John, the lights have been put out. The island lies reft of gladness, sodden the roots of crotons, gardens awash in rivers of stalk, petal, and wrack. The flood never ceases. At Queen’s Street, at Matilda’s Corner, along the Old Hope Road, a trickle of hand carts: a kettle, a photograph of Christ, a broadnosed ax, a lignum vitae bed, a cotton smock, a chest of drawers, an old man’s hat, a grandmother’s clock, a mermaid of glass, a pair of workboots. The questions fall, they fizzle and go out. Parliament deserted, water babbles in the aisle, left bench and right bench empty of thunder. The empty seats, e pluribus unum, a curse. Women flee to the airport; a child stops, drinks from the puddle left by a donkey’s hoof. No planes will kiss the sky, no bird will carry them to land. We are stuck, like a tree, I shout. Shade of Denzil, 386shade of Tanya and Charles, and the blank shadow of myself. We dance like the fates. Time passes, and clouds gather, and skies leak. Why not go in? A merciless whip, the lash of rain on my back. Where is the nurse, Martha the angellos, paraclete too pure for love? Her insides are bitter. Will she be appeased? Who can read this riddle for us? What man is not a riddle himself? Do we aim too high? Why is the wrath unleashed? Why shall I die and not live? Why shall my race be extinct? Why shall I eat dust? Why go on my belly like a dog? Why do I stare at a blizzard? Why do I scratch at my face? Why do I shriek at Danielle? Why do I hate what I love? The stones talk only to plan our death. Day in day out, the workmen hammer nails, fit joints, saw wood, talk with a loud scrape, and they sing. Chisel and lathe sing to us asleep, doing our tasks, making love, eating soup, waiting for the day of god. Thus we are children to the last. We hunt pigeons by guile and set them loose. We wait for our flight. An old woman thumps her chest and looks grim. Her room smells of lilac or death. Charles has trouble breathing. He’ll have to wait for the next bell. Danielle grows thin, stalk of celery. She’ll have to wait. She will not again be the girl who followed me home. The next world, where is it? A long time in the oven. Earth is behind us; it rode upon the flood and sank before the flood. No land. Bah! “Let it be done quickly!” “Not yet,” the poet said. Once, the lichen clouds, great boulders in the sky, swept over Riverside park. A morning of the trees, cool air, and pale blue light, she will come. Only let it stop. Pax vobiscum sit, undique verba tamquam imbres in me decidunt. Heu! a a. Creeping things take refuge in the house, ant with snake, centipede, galliwasp. Black men die and deepen at the roots of cotton. Shrieks of the cockfight spill from my eyes, mouth, nose. This could take some time, I murmur. Liver? OK. Heart? OK. Kidneys? OK. Lungs? OK. Everything in place and working round the clock. The old cock. What a sight! The bird of Zeus caws for some more liver. It bites, it draws, it feeds. The Titan lies open to the heavens. Eye of a red lid. Sunlight, rain, envy, ash, madness, skin, fire, death. The inner body seeps and quails, quakes, collapses on itself, and the dam of acid bursts. Sabotage, and the bird jabs. Terror, and the frame cracks. Frenzy, and the red eye of the moon searches out the One; her blade lies on my neck. Stars falter. Black sky, grey dirty morning, scream and cower of afternoon, dialtone days, rock of Sisyphus.
