For the Chief and Aripo.

Engaged colours dialogue
In compromise of space,
Each pigment plasters the detail
Of a nation summoned to rise from the earth,
The bulging embryo of stifled stillbirth
Only perverting the rhythm of
This labour of love,
But a prophet would never be welcomed-
in his home town.
How many silk-cotton trees dey try to cut-down
To size,
Before dey realize, it only give time
for the roots to bend deeper,
They the keepers
of our story,
enforce realities that we choose to ignore,
and the store
-houses for black gold,
could only preserve this people
through folklore,
but Man has become false law
unto himself,
and this fossil of a memory
is all he is left
with,
Memory is a presence
only moulded by goldsmiths
But at the mercy of this-
Master artist’s hands,
Recall turns to revelations
of a backward dance,
feet turned around,
chancing itself with a blind-man’s
lead, this country never holds on
to the men that she needs,
but he would still concede to her wishes,
Ascending to her whims,
but his
are the lungs of her mountains,
El Tucuche sings the ballad of her longing,
Read the paintings on the walls,
all the inscriptions are flowering,
Following,
down from the quiet of her emerald waters,
Aripo remains humble
knowing that she has conquered-
The landscape of this island,
risen to the pride of its ritual,
A relic of our sanctity,
the fragments of a spiritual,
Believing that this vessel could restore hope back to life,
Knotted umbilical chords strumming the hymn of his birthright,
Giving us to write-in all the unfinished verses,
But when a genius becomes 70, it marks a climax of ages.

copyright 2008