A City Affair
(for the Saint Lucian poets)

“Don’t you know I love you but am hopeless
at fixing the rain?” – Derek Walcott

We meet on the bus stand
our affair hidden in shouldering crowds –
another Wednesday, memory scouting through old Castries
retrieving lost facades, missing bars, gone tailor shops,
among sidewalk bazaars,
Syrian emporia, pastel food huts
and aloof desmoiselles.

Photo Copyright © 2020 by John Robert Lee—socially distanced.

for Ann-Margaret Lim

“To the saints who are in Ephesus.”  Ephesians 1:1

for Esther Phillips, Poet Laureate of Barbados

“Yet why not say what happened?

Pray for the grace of accuracy

Vermeer gave to the sun’s illumination…”  Robert Lowell

“...artefacts air-brushed from memory, teasing

holograms in glass globules, daring translation:

What can I make for you of those old bones, those scratched pebbles?”  Lee

i. earth: catacomb

earth-stones speak from Mazaruni galleries of petroglyphs and pictographs

murmur scratched names, carved mysteries, ancient runes of Rupunini

In memoriam: Gandolph St. Clair, 1951-2018

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     one of us has died—
stilt-walkers, drummers and trumpeter on the big truck
straggling mourners hiding

their distractions in crowding
embraces of old friends
coming off sidewalks

Meadow Dream.  Copyright © 2016 by Shallon Fadlien.

(for SF)

A story for you—

            in late afternoon drizzle

coming home through familiar Balata

its blossoming gardens of mangoes, gloricidia

            and palms’ branches like multi-winged cherubim — in that light

a huge rainbow, close as heaven, spectrum a palette

of red to indigo and her sister violet

            and I saw the end down a footpath

settled like a full-bodied beauty on a bench

Seven Worlds.  Copyright  © 2015 by Gary Butte.

“Where are the open spaces now

clear sky, the stars, horizons’ distances?”

KB, "The Forest-Masks"

We looked with you, pathfinder

into great halls, high spheres

of the seven kingdoms,

and you sang our lives

to memory

before the Golden Stool was lost

when we had our names

and names of the gods

and wombs of strong trees

Sea at Gros Islet.  Photo Copyright © 2015 by John Robert Lee.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar…   

Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach"

I suppose it’s ultimately personal

this building of a life—

ground, wall block, hardwood, clamped-metal

roof, about a well-planted

“So crossing the river
and walking the path
we came at last to Kumasi.” – Kamau Brathwaite

Prologue:       The merchant

Did he arrive at sunset’s orange hour

or with the anonymous midday bustle

markets busy before Sabbath—

and evening or noon height, him

stranger with strange wares

looking for a berth

in the fabled city?