For Lorna Goodison
Image: Artefacts of a Near Life. Used by permission of the author
Even the blind, sorrowful poet is written
by his own hand, and he does not know what he makes,
what he will leave behind. — Kwame Dawes, unHistory: A Poem Cycle
That time when we were ibises. — Dionne Brand, “Nomenclature for the Time Being”
i. Bob Marley came to me
Bob Marley came to me
on a bus in Barbados
when a historian friend gifted me a cassette
of the music: Catch a Fire (1973), with hypnotic
Concrete Jungle, Slave Driver,
Stir it up, Kinky reggae,
and all those skanking anthems we loved
and loved to, that still move the soles of our memory
to get up, stand up, in the skin of your heart’s soul,
to make “reggae aesthetic” the beat of your line,
your faith—even though I ’n’ I choose another Christ,
but still chant the same prophetic fire against Babylon.
ii. like, no more light, no more shadow
like, no more light, no more shadow
no more petals changing color
on the drying Rose of Sharon shrub,
no more sliver of a moon
as cycles phase around your calendar?
but there was some body with its scanning life
though now censers perfume holy books,
there was a voice enshrined in metaphor, simile
and art as spare in fine detail as Hasui,
though now the stylish mortician arranges hearsing—
and those living seeds eulogized in the brown earth
will enchant those who find their embracing branches in time.
iii. you would mark 1967–1979 . . .
you would mark 1967–1979 as cornerstone years of the chapel you are,
that brought you to this path winding above the multilane highway
rushing through your century’s violent Vanity Fair:
first bank job, arts, writers, drama crowd you admired,
women who loved you, stroking your gifts,
then to university, literature studies, those you loved forever,
temples of theater and poetry, publishing your first poems and the highs
that went with all that life; home again to teach, direct plays, write columns,
take up your love for radio, spinning Marley, Burning Spear, Kadans, broadcasting
the revolutionary fervor of those times, to first marriage, to Rasta,
then, somehow, your childhood faith finds you, immerses you below waters
and look you now, trodding this track above Babylon’s broad troubled road.
iv. what was that ritual about?
what was that ritual about? On many Old Year’s Nights,
after he had smoked the house with various incenses,
including asafoetida and its pungent aroma,
he would place the clay Choiseul coalpot
middle of our bare front room, fan its charcoal
to glowing red stones, sprinkle on more fragrant powders,
call me to stand in front that local brazier, then motion
to jump over it, back again, and forward one more time—
was that when he whispered intensely into my face “the first born
belongs to the LORD!?” Don’t think he offered any audible ancient invocation . . .
never forgotten, I never knew what that was about. Some initiation perhaps . . .
into the mystery of preacher, priest, poet . . . into this solitary business?
v. you come again to favorite passages
you come again to favorite passages and pathways
in poems, essays, scripture,
to be startled again, to wonder, past comprehension,
the reels of word, their cinematography, delicate woodblock certainty,
insistent calligraphy of measured geometry, certain truths,
“all flesh is grass,” irrefutable revelation, allegorical hermeneutic,
incredible clarity, evangelistic declarations (even under agnostic parasols)—
shafts of sacramental light across encroaching shadows, covenanting
words, darting quick like small birds at the slant of your eyes,
or leaving a sharp tang like tamarind on the tip of your tongue,
and how alarming is the stubborn rhythm of day,
as you look up into its falling shades, its silence, its nodding leaves . . .
vi. today, the clanging, moaning, whining yellow backhoe
today, the clanging, moaning, whining yellow backhoe
is gouging ground, like the metallic dinosaur
it is; it assaults that grove of tall trees
where fireflies signaled at nights, where
crickets loudly clattered without discord, over which hawks
slid on the cool air of this hill, and I
mourn the death of those elegant, mythical trees—
since we moved here, many groves have been supplanted
by concrete houses, their multicolored metal roofs,
rough tracks of roads, loud-speakered cars,
by our necessary domiciles, our relentless weed-whackers—
I miss the semaphore of fireflies under leaves in early night.
vii. art and poems are sacraments of faith
art and poems are sacraments of faith—
the invisible numinous taking shape in our dimension
like angels come from mystery
to paint lines in ink or acrylic, gouache, classic tempera
on our cracked palimpsests, to carve fonts in typeface
immersing impossible words impossibly articulating
the sacred we sense, reach for, avoid—
faith is its own sacrament
bread raised above the cup of our desperate hope
chanting light against demonic doubts and fears of dark
lifting canticles of defiant joy
into metaphors, images of art, of poetry.
viii. this impasto of a world, of a life
this impasto of a world, of a life
on the worn boxed canvas of nothing, nihilo,
sculptural moulding of palate knife
into organic reality of fauna, flora, passion,
the rainbow spectra of brush-strokes
refracting light off lavender hills, blue roofs, white shrouds
of Gaza—no complacent, idle sketch this of unbelief
or safely-galleried, fashionable flat-world icon,
but many-dimensioned mysteries are here,
fire-dragoned as volcanoes, furious as hurricanes, splitting earth’s faults,
murderous as gang vendettas and garden betrayals,
lovely, desirable, maddening—this beautiful, marbled impasto of earth.
ix. the haloed moon, like a portal
the haloed moon, like a portal
to gnostic fantasies of the 7 seraphic messengers
coming and going through apocrypha, the rainbow-
haloed full moon seems apocalyptic, urgent
in its fixed intensity over our callous unheeding,
rushing at each other, divided
from ourselves at the soul, genocidal
across contested borders, autocratic within—
how can there not come a flood of fire
pouring through that halo, giant icebergs falling
out of the red sun, darkness tumbling
like demonic comets on this reeling globe of a fractious world?
x. once, when I was a Rasta
once, when I was a Rasta
I met Christ in a ghetto shack
in the Graveyard off Chaussée Rd, Castries—
with complacent ease of our shared chalice,
him quiet in the circling murmur of chat,
locks falling around his bowed head, brown-
complexioned, deep in itation, he
was the manifest image from memories of art,
messianic, epiphanic, there—
his name was actually Lord, Kenny Lord. He died some time ago.
I still remember that projection, the man, earth-brown floor,
that mystery of desire for the Risen, Hidden One.
xi. tomorrow is not so much uncertain
tomorrow is not so much uncertain
as unpromised /
the day after always comes
turning through monotonous time
or tumbling down past eternity’s veiled apprehensions /
- the infinite mystery of that dessicated, beautiful leaf, look! /
and why has one loved you, so simply,
so forever, faithful to whatever conjunction
of zodiac plotted your coordinates? /
not death, you say, but dying, terrifies,
that decrepit collapsing of a life into the heaped dust of its corners /
I believe in the place where fallen birds, lost cats, encompassing embraces go /
xii. in diurnal journals
in diurnal journals
oracles and omens, ambiguous, obscure
symbolic gestures, eulogies,
mantras of vocalists masked
in ekphrastic correspondences,
and you playing voyeur among the lines
of tattooed goddesses flaunting their bodies
through gossiping sidewalks,
in non-thematic trajectories
at the flirtatious edges of seawater,
or paused, before, bloody white shrouds, of Gaza—
flirtations, eulogies, omens, oracles in our diurnal journals.
John Robert Lee is a Saint Lucian writer. He is the author of Belmont Portfolio: Poems (Peepal Tree Press, 2023) and After Poems, Psalms (Peepal Tree Press, forthcoming). This poem, “Twelve,” is from a new manuscript titled “Diary.”