& please to
let me linger
in the memory of a few
close friends & family
a month or two
A BIRTHDAY POEM
Peel-head john-crow circling
year after year habitually conveys
congratulations dead on time;
each year it wheezes, hovering:
‘Happy birthday: you decline
hereafter, everything decays.’
Supernal mockery presents
that gliding messenger on time
each year, in pantomime
of blessing, wry malevolence
of joy before our wasting innocence.
HISTORIAN
for Elsa Goveia
& here we are
remembering
the dark
woman who
searched out meaning
in the dust
& left us
the enigma of her
going
JAMAICAN DANCE #2
for Oswald Russell
Bereavement singing
from the instrument,
interrogating death,
the nine-night
in your left hand
wringing grief.
Birds twittering
their fore-day call
and response.
Sammy dead-oh,
Sammy dead-oh.
Bawl, woman, bawl.
THE DAY MY FATHER DIED
The day my father died
I could not cry;
My mother cried,
Not I.
His face on the pillow
In the dim light
Wrote mourning to me,
Black and white.
We saw him struggle,
Stiffen, relax;
The face fell empty,
Dead as wax.
I’d read of death
But never seen.
My father’s face, I swear,
Was not serene.
Topple that lie,
However appealing:
That face was absence
Of all feeling.
My mother’s tears were my tears,
Each sob shook me:
The pain of death is living,
The dead are free.
For me my father’s death
Was mother’s sorrow;
That day was her day.
Loss was tomorrow.
YOUNG WIDOW, GRAVE
A wreath of mourners
at the grave. It gapes.
The people sing.
The service isn’t meaning anything.
His secretary’s legs look sleek in black.
The widow’s looking farther back.
Across the gap, now flower-choked,
her swollen eyes have stumbled on
another man she lost; who poked
the fire, and when it stirred was gone.
That was another death.
FAREWELL FUNCTION
he basked in admiration
dreaming
paradise
until
his metamorphosis
into a morbid
out-of-body witness
at the operation
like a patient etherized
returning
from the edge
& catching an obituary
draught
GARDEN
after a shower
blackbirds preening on the grass
dressing for heaven
TERMINAL
She’s withering
before our eyes
and no one
noticeably
cries
We do
the hopeful
ritual
each day
we bring
fresh fruit
we prattle
and we pray
for hours
Her room
is heavy
with the scent
of flowers
A CHANT AGAINST DEATH
for Aidan & Ruth
say family
say friends
say wife
say love
say life
say learning
laughter
sunlight
rain
say cycle
circle
music
memory
say night & day
say sun & moon
say
see you soon
POSTCARD
from Longarone
Green fields
a vineyard
red-roofed cottages
a farmer & his dog
before the flood
& here
at panel two
grey miles of waste
a desolating tract
What countervailing
message
do you scrawl
on this
this glossy memento
mori
MY RODNEY POEM
for Eddie Baugh
& in memory of Walter
I
He lived
a simple life
He was a man
who cared
when anybody hurt
not just the wretched
of the earth
He dared
to be involved
in nurturing
upheavals
II
Frustrated by
the host of evils
he seemed to me a good
man reaching for the moon
He died
too soon
EPITAPH
for Nita Barrow
Unusually perceptive human being,
genial, compassionate and wise,
she helped us see what she was seeing,
our true potential playing in her eyes.
SOPRANO
they say
she sang her heart out
day before she died
truth is
she sang her heart out
time after time
just like the day before
she soared
into another life
still singing
heaven
LYING IN STATE
Viewing the body endlessly
the people pass
tearfully relearning
that flesh is grass.
We’re shuffling along
(the ritual declares)
to celebrate another life.
We mask our fears.
Peering at the face of death
the people pass
fearfully relearning:
All flesh is grass.
A DAUGHTER’S RECOLLECTION
My father smoked
and smoking killed him
in the end
but I’m remembering
that in my childhood
when he wiped my tears
the magic-making
handkerchief
smelt always
of tobacco
EXHIBITION
His early work was radiant
(‘resolutely sane’, she said)
before the demons took him
to the shadow in his head.
Aficionados talk us through
the middle period, elegantly dread,
to what they call ‘exhilarating darkness’
now he’s dead.
AU REVOIR
He loved her madly,
cherishing her witty candour,
raunchy jokes,
tenacious joie de vivre.
After she left him for a nursing home,
each evening at their silent bungalow
the table would be set for two
and he would dine alone.
Last week Thursday, on his birthday,
after a whisky in the fading light,
he heard her breathe
, ‘Enough’.
He wiped his eyes and, like a courtier,
bowed low to kiss her shrivelled hand.
GRANNY
When Granny died
I stumbled in and out
her place, remembering
banana porridge, fumbling
her dog-eared bible,
faded bedspread,
musty cushions, hugging
memories of her love.
From the overflowing funeral
this fingled programme
is a talisman I carry
everywhere. Love is with me still.
DINNER PARTY
Between convivial
flashes of hilarity
a brooding presence.
Half his friends have died,
and each white bird
is like a premonition.
He shuffles towards
the car door, struggles in
and waves goodbye.
DIPTYCH
I
when the wild guitarist
making too much noise
was thrown out by
his wutliss friend
he hanged himself
the day the music stopped
i came by
& was blasted
by the poui tree’s
golden indifference
II
when the drunken painter
messing up the place
was thrown out by
the woman paying the rent
he hanged himself
& when he died
she gave away his last
pathetic canvasses
of sombre figures
& the poui weeping gold
LEGION
1
in the agonising
calm
a self-
destructive dread
erupted
from the boneyard
howling
2
deadly bastard
fucking up
our lives
an intimate
disaster
littering the tombstones
with his shredded poems
3
dark dark dark
inside
the world i want
to bury
yerri mi mi nana
yerri mi …
CHECKING OUT
I slam the door. ‘Dear, are you positive
there’s nothing left?’ Well, no:
something remains, I’m sure of that:
some vestige of our lives in this bare flat
will linger, some impulse will outlive
our going, recycled in the flow
of being. We never leave,
we always have to go.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Some of these poems have appeared in the following journals and newspapers: Aqueduct, Ariel, Arts Review, Atlanta Review, Bim, Callaloo, Caribbean Quarterly, The Caribbean Writer, Cincinnati Poetry Review, English, Graham House Review, Greenfield Review, The Independent, International Portland Review, Interviewing the Caribbean, The Jamaica Daily News, The Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Journal, The Jamaica Sunday Observer, Kyk-Over-Al, The Literary Half-Yearly, Mississippi Review, Nimrod, Now, Obsidian III, Outposts, Pathways, Pepperpot, Planet, Poetry International, Poetry Wales, Poui, Public Opinion, Race Today, Savacou, Tapia, The Times Literary Supplement, Trinidad and Tobago Review, Wasafiri and World Literature Today.
Copyright © Mervyn Morris 2017
INDEX OF TITLES
Acrobat 99
Advisory 200
Afro-Saxon 196
After the Movie 49
Anniversary Proceedings 120
Another Wedding 113
Asylum 45
At a Poetry Reading 6
At Church 151
At Home 93
Au Revoir 235
Autograph Album 106
Behind the Curtain 209
A Birthday Poem 218
Birthdays 13
Boarding School 157
Breaking Up 115
Brief 193
Cabal 194
Casanova 72
Case History, Jamaica 192
The Castle 163
Catch a Nigger 201
Cave 9
Centurion 138
A Chant against Death 227
Checking Out 240
Chinese Boxes 18
Communion 153
A Conference Hymn 147
Counsellor 41
Critic 65
Critique 48
Dadd, Poor Dadd 43
Data 50
A Daughter’s Recollection 233
The Day My Father Died 221
Death and the Maiden 215
Departure Lounge 114
Dialogue for Dancers 81
Dialogue for One 24
Dinner Party 237
Diptych 238
A Drawing 4
Dream 21
Dreamtime 59
The Early Rebels 171
Encounter 47
Endgame 71
Epiphany 96
Epitaph 230
Eve 154
Examination Centre 33
Exhibition 234
Fable 211
Family Pictures 86
Farewell Function 224
Fete 185
For 1865 199
For a Son 90
For Consciousness 202
For Queen Elizabeth II 177
The Forest 51
Gaffes 20
Games 94
Garden 225
Gardening 31
Give T’anks 100
Going through the Park 54
Granny 236
Greatest Show on Earth 208
Grounation 174
Guinea Pig 117
Happy Hour 73
Having Eyes that See 188
Heritage 164
Hey, Ref! 179
Historian 219
Home 112
Homily 149
The House Slave 197
Housemaster at Work 159
I Am the Man 198
In the Garden 155
Interface 105
Interior 34
Interlude 95
Interview 108
Jamaica 1979 167
Jamaican Dance #2 220
Jesus in Gethsemane 124
Jesus on the Road 135
John 140
Joseph of Arimathaea 141
Journey into the Interior 8
Judas 126
Lecturer 184
Legion 239
Literary Evening, Jamaica 165
Little Boy Crying 91
Living near the Zoo 210
Love Is 88
The Lovers 110
Lying in State 232
Malefactor (Left) 136
Malefactor (Right) 137
Mariners 23
Mary Magdalene 142
Mary (Mother) 139
Maverick 173
Meeting 189
Meeting the Mage 213
Memento 69
A Memory 77
The Militant 172
Moment of Truth 74
Montage 178
Moth 107
Mother of Judas, Mother of God 156
Muntu 175
Muse 28
Museum Piece 42
The Music Room 5
My Rodney Poem 229
Narcissus 206
Night Flight 80
North Coast Hotel 89
Notice 22
Nursery 191
Oblation 30
An Offering 85
Omens 207
On Campus, Murder 187
Operation 111
Outing 162
Palimpsest 92
Pantomime 78
Parlour Game 82
Peacetime 75
Peelin Orange 7
Persephone 79
Peter 131
&n
bsp; Pilate 129
Pilate’s Wife 128
The Pledge 101
A Poet of the People 205
Poetry Workshop 52
Politician Nightmare 195
The Pond 25
Post-Colonial Identity 176
Postcard 228
Praise the Lord 152
Pre-Carnival Party 216
Presences 119
A Priest 125
Progeny 14
Prologue by the Maker 123
Proposition One 109
Pussycat 116
Question Time 15
A Reading 26
The Reassurance 60
Recreation 148
Remembering John La Rose 190
Peelin Orange Page 8