Letter
after
Dionne Brand: a glosa variation
“all
I can offer you now though is my brooding hand,
my
sodden eyelashes and the like,
these
humble and particular things I know,
my
eyes pinned to your face.” – Dionne Brand (Inventory)
I.
I must tell
you how moved I was
astonished,
perhaps like the wind’s castanets in palms
outside my
window, like the shak-shak of shells
under the interfering proddings of surf —
how you drew me close, yes, to brimming
over your so-unexpected full-veined
lines that were the archetypal echo
humming under my breath
and, indeed, here you were Brand —
all
I can offer you now though is my brooding hand,
II.
parsing your
notations, perusing your inventory
of our blasted
days, Aleppo now
and then Nice
and yesterday Orlando
tomorrow Laventille again, Trench Town recurrent
Richmond Hill impossible to forget —
ossuaries, yes, of failed states and their
politricks
babies broken on beaches, Mediterranean
drowned in overladen caravels
our islands’ doomed alleys mocking
my
sodden eyelashes and the like —
III.
exhausting,
these post-modern certainties
no truth, no
meaning, no author
no beauty I
suppose in the old songs of remembering
upon drum, string and bones
dimpled laugh of the old woman who loves you
long arms of the dancer from San Fernando
sacramental light rimming the ends of sunsets
languid cruising of scissor-tailed seabirds
through our horizons, reading a fine poet from
Toronto —
these
humble and particular things I know,
IV.
add thresholds
of jalousied doorways I crossed
pursuing
mystery love, drawn even then by the echo
quivering on
metronomes of evening softnesses
to find faith waiting in lines of dread-locked
canticles
pointing couplets of dark sayings
terrible chapters of mighty prophecies —
anyway, like some minor April epiphany
am downtown Port of Spain, corner Hart &
Abercromby
and you reading, tenderly, at Bocas
my
eyes pinned to your face
