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Velma Pollard
LINES IN SORROW
(for the Adams)
another young one gone
another mother sighs
cho! all this fuss
making them fit to earn
the living we don't know
that they will ever need
them dying off like
Kingston butterflies
one time
O too had said
that I would stop and wait
and wait to go
since that must come
but the cynic I was living with said
people like you promise to die young
then hang on here forever
living off the rest
that way it didn't sound
too wise
It's the perhaps
that threatens.
SU SU
Susu su su Susu su su
among the yellow poui
you hear
I hear
leaves in the Japanese garden
'tiday fi mi tumaro fi yu'
like Brer Anancy talking in his nose
Susu su su
And how I laughed that day
I heard them say
'im shouldn bury there
im a go come back fi dem have no fear'
denying all the rural wisdom I had known. . .
Then quick and fast
some hidden hit man
strikes us off our anxious lists
and you
and I
stand open-mouthed
as poui leaves whisper just before they fall
tiday fi mi
tumaro fi you
Susu su su
Susu su su
TO GRAN... AND NO FAREWELL
I didnt wish to see the moth-marks
where your Khus Khus smelled
the high weeds crowding the forget-me-nots
or alien fingers
handling knives and spoons
kept sheening in brown calico
and so I let the years
make jumbie chain-links
ages long before I brought
bright florets for your grave
One room remains
and one small fretwork shard
among the rotted beams
ingrown with baby grass
remembers still the august Entry Hall
tributes of broken china
lean-to tables
and an old man shambling out and in
cursing the vultures
who would snatch the land...
I round the corner
eager with my shrubs
the grave at last...
then unbelieving shudder
Corpie’s tomb
Naomi’s garden square
and yours that now
my mind will never hold
no single adoration
no peculiar tears
some well-intentioned
madman with his spade...
all now one vast sepulchraic mass
I crush the shrublets
tramp them underfoot
and with a heart
too swollen now for tears
descend the slope
without adieu.
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