Bosch's Vision

…and I look in the rearview and see a man
exactly like me, and the man was weeping
for the houses, the streets, that whole fucking island.
Derek Walcott – The Schooner Flight


It started as I was leaving
with a dim groan in the afternoon.
I saw my grandmother
embrace me  
in her hand stitched dress
and wrench my soulcage open.

I saw vistas of apocalyptic Europe;
heard obscure tongues.
Till sudden now the sky become
peppered with woe.
Slack eyed soldiers were howling
in the wind.
Botched leper experiments
and gene mutations
with veins hung    
like vervain from the neck.

The sun long gone and weeping.

The oil.

The Devil.

No doubt it was.
The Devil.
Who chased colour from the earth.
Who left sulphur where he spoke
like a jitney carburettor.
No doubt it was.
The devil.
Twisted muscle of night.
Who crackt
the sky glass lid.


Maman.
Tell me again why I should leave this island.
Tell me again that those cities exist.
All I know of the ocean
is that a river     
starts here.

The day I left Mt Lambert
the wardrobe doors would gleam.
It was a day like any other.
Woodslaves ran and woodslaves waited.        
Lovers lay against the Samaan trees.
Cattle grazed and bachacs burned
in matchbox discoteques.
And the sandbox tree released its fruit.

But we were going to the airport
and my brother in the backseat    
is him I ask : is me
this happening to?