Goodman's Bay II
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Straight to the bush to gather crackedbottles of beer and rum, shards of seaglasssmoothed by wind and sand. We Haitian
Bahamian descendants, Burial Societyflock, crawl through the blue night. Since the lightat dusk is like muslin, we lay the cold
body of this man, then, on the shoreof Goodman's Bay. How he wash herewe don't know, but the workers clearing
the beach say, This him. John Goodmanhe name, originally Jean-Paul Delattre,brother of Stephen Dillet, first coloured manin Parliament. Come here on a boatfrom Haiti back then, back again,so we jewel the edges of his body
with shattered bottles, then bear himto the foot of casuarinas in order that his bornsilhouette self may freely bling and dance—
luminous shadow lifting from the sandof this beach name after a black man. [End Page 431]
Christian Campbell, resident of the Bahamas and Trinidad & Tobago, read for the M. Phil. in English at Balliol College, Oxford University, as the 2002 Commonwealth Caribbean Rhodes Scholar and recently completed the Ph. D. degree in English at Duke University. He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Franklin & Marshall College. During the 2008 fall term, he will join the English faculty at the University of Toronto.
