ON THE TONGUE

August burns the sea to galvanize.
                                                       Breakers
clamour at Las Cuevas Bay beneath 
the sheer green cliffs of El Tucuche,
rising like that pyramid at Palenque
under an indigo sky.
                                     See the sweep of the beach,
still hear the surf’s murmured litany?

In the cove of the fishing village,
the pirogues riding the swell, pulling
at their taut moorings as tight as cuatro strings,
I have my heart pulled back to the coast:
Maracas, Las Cuevas, La Fillette, Blanchiseuse.
Like Parang, oui. On the roadside,
Where the Ti-Marie prickles:
“Doux-doux, moin kai checher volant ba’ous.”
“Darling, I go look for some flying-fish for you.” ¹
In the sigh of the casuarinas:
“Child, don’t speak Congo.”

Later, that afternoon, under the burnt palms,
the old-fashioned East Indian family,
the old woman in her shiny dress
with the grand children: “Ei beti, beta,”
her tongue sweet and sour with Bhojpuri.

Out there, the kala pani, black water,
indentured passage from Calcutta,
Uttar Pradesh to Chinitat: now, voices,
not Calcutta, not Congo,
more like brown sugar,
hot pepper sauce on the tongue,
roti, sweet callaloo, cascadu,
coming down the Butler Highway
from Chaguanas, Felicity, Debe,
the canefields of Usine Sainte Madeleine,
Petit Morne, the sugar estate
where I was born.

                                         Sans humanité.

¹ The Derek Walcott quotation is from the poem “Sainte Lucie,” section III, Iona: Mabouya Valley, p. 316 (Collected Poems).