In Kingston after the storm, the yard
cools, the grass slippery underfoot,
leaves dripping—the air heavy with fatigue.
I move to the low branch of the coolie plum tree,
straddle it and wait for the wind to clear
the growing anticipation of gloom.
And there he is, sculpted pale wood
gleaming with cold sweat, stern prophecy
in each inflection, the dark root tendrils
mangrove growing out and into soil
you know now, what death looks like,
the economy of movement, the soul giving
as if straining against some terror lurking
the voice turning his syntax into a final plea,
I remember, I remember, I remember when.
They could not have known, they who rolled
under the incense of his sound, could not
have known what even he did not truly know
every strained word a holy benediction.
Tonight, I watch again and again, the garish
light, the stoic faces of the three women
their voices his buoy, his craft across the unsteady
waters—even they did not know themselves
to be women at the tomb, or, later,
ancestresses in the open field, looking back,
and in this we understand the impossibility
of grace—the squalor, the decay
the body’s rot, and still the light, the light.
I say here that it is not music, not so ordinary;
it is a sacrament, it remains a sacrament
and this is all that must be said.