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.
Full disclosure –
no affair, just an aging poet’s fantasy
of a shapely muse from Marc or Millet
gentle spirit dissing corny flirtations
with watchful eyes and dimpled chin.
I guess our island cities age with us –
too-familiar corners turn weary with worn paint
houses that once welcomed you lean into broken steps
grime has grown dirty grey at the head of certain streets
we have become old strangers with the stranded shoemaker
near Victoria and Chisel.
Alert for bag snatchers and stray bullets,
pressing against all that life
in the anonymous teeming of this culture ̶
what do we love, if we love, and how doubt that we love?
:brash illiterate glamour, gossip of salons and parlours,
incomprehensible jabber of Jamaican Gaza from young pirates’ trays,
70’s chic thickened into retirement and resignation;
those around the park who recall
what we have forgotten about ourselves –
how doubt that we love the faithful harbour
closing in twilight after the cruisers,
soft-candle light settling from Mount Pleasant to Morne du Don to Morne
Fortune,
sudden scattering of fine drizzle,
remembrances of yards, rooms, first loves
and evenings coming down to town –
And I see I have gone to fictions of memory
asking of love now
as a man searches the warm ashes of a long marriage
to find again, if he can, the first coal,
glowing infatuation,
and under inquisition to seek out
what do we love, if we love and how doubt that we love?
On quiet Wednesdays, in lanes and streets of old Castries
passing through bus stands
looking, I suppose, some epiphany –
I imagine apocalypse
the last muted trumpet coming up
under that strange harmony of voices, sound-systems, traffic.
And O, I fear, I yearn, I hope,
for these I do love,
how doubt that I love,
beyond my heart’s flooding boulevard ̶
for these
I plead, I pray O Christ
Your enrapturing Grace.
*
Sabbathing Wednesday
(for KH)
Yes, I would Sabbath Wednesday
proclaim procession through old parts of town
place shrines of palm booths under verandahs’ ancient fretwork
and players of instruments at random corners;
mid-morning, mid-morning, a gentle air abroad,
benevolence at shop-fronts and half-opened jalousies,
angels ascending from Mary Ann to Broglie to Coral Street.
Yes, Wednesday for Sabbath,
resting centre of the week
pivot of our circling, cycling, repetitious livings;
but along the first sidewalks we skipped,
near those same zinc gates to alleys, yards and wooden steps
we recollect,
window ledges from which such courtesies and wisdom flowed –
to these our pilgrim feet should wander
with music up the road
away from downtown frenzy, frenetic sirens, hustlers,
on mid-morning Wednesdays,
Sabbathing.
