After Dionne Brand: a glosa

(c) John Robert Lee 2016

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