4 February 2020. Dear Kamau

4 February 2020.

dear Kamau
dear poet who left for the country where no hat is needed
thank you so much for this long searing dazzling encounter with your text DreamHaïti
it carried me, I carried it
poet, diving bird!
from the heart of our darkest shipwrecks, you fish out
foetuses of light,
re-membered words,
singing rafts, pipirit!
for our own middle passage
our infinite crossing of time
your words still and again
(here quietly centered, like eyes washed with tears stare grief in the face)
are here to comfort me
you great poet who art in heaven. IERE.

1

Those who i hold most dear
are never dead

they become more than fixed
in song or stone or album

mixed with my sand and mortar
they walk in me with the world

2

How often have we stood
sombred in mourning
scattering dust to dust & ashes

to the earth. The flowers wilt re-
cover with the rain and re-
wither. petals colours into dust

But in our house
behind our words our wines
the flowers bloom are free for-
ever and again the dead dust shines with us
in the completed silence

 …

From mesongs, a sequence in the collection Elegguas (Wesleyan University Press, 2012)