This New LightAuthor(s): Ralph ThompsonSource: Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 1/2, <italic>At Home the Green Remains</italic>(March-June 2003), pp. 142-143Published by: University of the West Indies and Caribbean QuarterlyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40654372 .

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142

Two Poems by Ralph Thompson This New Light

The light that I have so long loved turns its gaze grudgingly from the old view of islands, from enfolding valleys waking from their sleep, dew dangling at each morning's edge, testing the gravity of calyx, leaf and stem; turns from villages at night cupping their candles in procession down a mountain, a girl's giggle muffled in the forest's throat; turns from the embracing absolution of the ocean, washing colonial guilt like seaweed from an unrepentant beach.

Now the dream is draining from the shadows in the valley, edges hardening in disgust as the light grows into a harsh, uncompromising glare. The sun is turning cynical, taking its morning tally in the tarnished air like a complacent prison warder twisting an ochre thumb print into Kingston's face. This light cannot erase its new reflection - at dawn an albino hawk circling a feeding tree, wing tipped with gold, glint of a grin from the muzzle of a gun as a black Clint Eastwood mocks the killing field and runs that fable through another version.

This is a light that scars the earth, a scrutiny that withers myth and cauterizes pain. Wordsworth could not survive a squint at it. Pan has swapped his flute for an amplifier blasting fifteen hundred watts but after all the questions, a rumour lingers. In the city's bursting funeral parlours the corpses glow at night, nimbus of blue acetylene burning the darkness under the roof, lighting the windows....crunch of bone and sinew as a foot curls into a cloven hoof.

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143

To keep the secret they are buried in their boots but under the leather the light still glows, even as coarse, wet hair begins to sprout over the ankles and along the shin.

Espousals written in memory of my friend John Figueroa

After the dregs of racial pride there is humanity,

After the ashes of patriotism there is brotherhood,

After the dogmas of religion there is conscience,

After the smoke of ideology there is common sense,

After the echo of poetry there is poetry.

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