HOW WE LOVE THEM

WES HALL, THE fastest fast bowler, 6'4", strong, loud, is beginning to totter.  He says it is because of his accident.  No doubt.  Derek Walcott rides a wheelchair—the man people and his poetry said was a lover, possibly a rake.  George Lamming, well, he totters, too.  I saw him drop a book, and though he possibly could pick it up, I saw the relief, surreptitious and possibly angry, too, when she, young and supple, did instead.  Tom Clarke curses that he has to sit when the young one offers him a seat in the bus.  He'd rather not be seen to need a hand up of that kind.  Well, I am 61, and in 2000, when I published my first book of poetry and Kamau Brathwaite wrote and said, "WELCOME!" I never knew that this would be 15 years later, and the book was in celebration of Kamau's 70th birthday.  What a ting, neh?

How we love them.

—
Margaret D. Kawamuinyo Gill. Poet Laureate 2013 for 20th anniversary IGDS-Dame Nita Unit, University of the West Indies.  Poetry residency 2011, Banff Arts Centre, Alberta, Canada.  Fellow in Writing 2008, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong and China. Frank Collymore Literary Award 1998.  A writer for 1972 Barbados Carifesta performance.