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
“…the metaphor is an aggressive attempt at clarity, not secrecy. The poem addresses the reader, it asks the first question, it is not interested in the reader’s comfort nor a narrative solution. It is not interested in your emotional expectations, or chronologies. It is flooded with the world. The great interrogation room is the stanza, you are standing at its door.” Dionne Brand
You must now enter the silence alone and listen. Wait.
Wait for the translation of the first line. Write.
Write with your fingers searching the pigments on the palate
for the essential shading of the right
image. The medium frames the sacred intercession.
To give face, posture and voice to the holy is no trite
matter. And where humility unveils some gracious incarnation,
offer first this blessed sacrament to the King of saints.
Some would say all poetry is ekphrastic
rising with intuition to theme, line, palette, pixel
of painting, carving, photograph, the art of life
responding with literal or oblique synonymous meaning—
how about erotic? The foreplay of lipping and tonguing
seductive verbs, hard nouns, some flattering adjectives,
erection of firm stanzas over flowing imagination,
the coming together of the last line and exhausted conclusion.
Learn from Shadow, solitary
mighty kaiso griot, how to put the story:
hear in your ear a prancing line
chant extension of syllables through waving melodies
phrase in the cave of your palate amazing phrases
straight from the yard behind the galvanise
ricochet and dingolay down in the common life you come from
stand up jumping in the parade of stanzas with your rough voice.
Not just the hard structure of logic, perfect architecture
of turning line, clever caesura, lurking tone of meaning
not just extended, smart metaphor
but how to bring the backward glance of the coupled heart
with the tender fervor of Creole violons, Malavoi harmonies
Patrick St Eloi, konpa horns from Haiti
because words must swing too, must flirt too
whatever the story, whatever the mood.
The body in the mirror of the show window
is not all you are, lady—
you have a thinking body in your head under the weave
behind that marvellous cleavage, your heart-shape embodies polyrhythmic feelings
and deeper still, theologians and philosophers propose
a body of spirit that really rules
your sensuous moving past our admiring eyes—
you like a created poem in image and likeness.
After all, after waiting, waiting for the first line
for decorative words to clothe the skeletal idea
for the shaping flow of meaningful imagination
married to the truth of the thing you see and hear
hoping for the touch of sheltering beauty
and taste of harmony for which you almost despair—
when it does appear, you wonder with a hopeless prayer
what’s it for? with whom can I share?
Ex nihilo, out of nothing
on to the void of the page of the screen
the narrative begins, again and again—
light in the urban darkness, recurring hope of heavens, reality of troubled earth
planting thought to give seed and fruit, galaxies telescoped for alien signs
seabirds and flying fish for metaphor, beasts and creeping things for symbol—
and always, always, it’s about naked Man and Woman
disputing for rest in the garden of their God.
