Four Poems About Jamaica

1. Montego Bay, 10:00 P.M.

A chandelier, a tiara,

a hive of lights. A cruise ship

is leaving, the S.S. Jesus

again, the only ship that comes

here. If I watch the ship go

long enough I become the ship.

So rather than leave I look away --

because the sea is a foreign country

and I love to travel, but not

like a faltering heart

set on fire and pushed out to sea

not like a birthday cake.

2. Jamaicans Posing to Be Photographed

Illiterate Esther watched me

closing a book and asked,

Can you hear from the dead

with that box? God yes.

Today I take pictures.

My subjects are full dress.

My subjects! As the language

I liveby flows through me

it carries so much history

I'm embarrassed, I who believe

in language and distrust

its exact parlor tricks.

Full dress, historical

posture, as if they were running

for office or these were wedding

pictures, since white folks care

about weddings. Somber Ronald,

age three. And Esther, archival,

though the dead don't live in boxes

and nothing keeps in the heat.

3. A Hairpin Turn above Reading, Jamaica

for Russell Banks

Here's where the fire truck fell

beached on its side, off the road.

So when the fire fell into itself

we came down the hill to watch

the fire truck get saved. Only

the rich live this high, with a view

of the bay, and the rich

will be with us forever,

though the pump at the base

of the mountain burns out

and the Socialist party, in power,

is sorry. The rich buy truckloads

of water and hire the poor

to drive them up. Water will go

uphill if money will go down.

Today there's a goat in the bend,

stolid and demure. She'll move

soon: there's nothing to eat in the road.

A cow and two egrets tack

into the shadow of a mango.

It's noon. Above the bay, turkey

buzzards sift the thermals.

At dawn they perch and spread

their wings to dry, like laundry.

My friends and I are the rich,

though the house is rented. We'll fall

away, the goat will loll off the road,

the bad clutch in the van will slur

but we'll make it up, and we do,

heat-steeped, thoughtful, and sleepy.

4. Kingston

No photograph does justice, etc.,

but what does a photograph care

for justice? It wants to be clear,

the way an angel need not mean,

but be, duty enough for an angel.

No angels here. Hovels seen from far

enough away they look picturesque.

The blatant blue sky so cool in pictures

is gritty with heat. The long day stings.

We squint at the lens. Though the lines

in our faces are engraved by the acids

of muscle-habits, not by tears.

Sympathy we have to learn. Here's

a family of three living in a dead car.

The guidebooks warned us away

from this, and so we came,

ungainly, spreading

our understandings of sorrow like wet wings.

We turn and turn, but everywhere is here,

a blurred circle of wing scuffs.