Line

"The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places;
yes, I have a goodly heritage."

—Psalm 16:6

I.

Within the boundaries of my mortgaged peace,
bordered by unruly ficus, some struggling croton,
forsaken fallen palms and other anonymous waste—

Veronica's scattered variety of roses, Simone's
sensible vegetables, Kamara's clump of scruffy cat-tails,
and, swimming in Babonneau air like a tentacled sea-anemone,

the breadfruit; only today, "Jules' tree-trimming
crew"from Desbarras sawed down the ant-infested mango. Among
other unknown pretty-flowered bush—from Joy's time,
the elegant Easter spider-lily, in all her seasonal fragrance.

Ii.

"to every line there is a time and a season."

(DW)

When have I not measured this land by your lines?
When have I not tracked blue-smoke pits to their river-stone roots by your metaphor?
When have I not walked, Walcott, by your fire-scorched love, through uptown lanes

of old Castries, strolled the revolving corners of Chaussée, Coral, Broglie, Victoria?
You leave us your covenants with the everlasting fretworked eaves
of Riverside Road, gommier canots and their men from Dauphin to Vieux Fort,

the epiphanic groves of Mon Repos, the stone chapel of Rivière Dorée, the turning
                leaves'
whispering of Methodist hymnals on Chisel Street.
It's what's left, at the end of the line (I imagine you insisting) that scans our lives,
marks our season's faith, and amortizes all indentured loans.

Iii.

"qu'est-ce que la poésie, si elle mérite son sel,
sinon un langage qui passé de main en bouche?"

(DW)

The cross-hatching drizzle imitates flaking snow.
It's not Boston, just Castries, near the Square.
Snow, or warm rain, whatever city, the sketchy common news

these days is of war in ancient lands, terror
in towns whose subways we've negotiated,
vice parading proud banners in new Gomorrahs.

And while the bellowing fog of Babel's collapsing ziggurats chokes 5^th Avenue
            with the same old hatreds—
from some obscure archipelagic galaxy,
unknown nebulae, light-years ahead,
sign fresh canticles to patient watchers on Becune's surf-battered coast and on hill-top
         hamlets of Plateau.

Iv.

"but come, girl, get your raincoat, let's look for life
in some café behind tear-streaked windows…"

(DW)

I didn't see any 36 views of Mount Fuji. From the bullet-train to Kyoto,
Fuji wasn't there for the film. Like Morne Gimie in July, forest worlds floating in
                self-indulgent cloud.
I did see Kabuki—at a theatre near Ginza Station, on Harumi Street in Tokyo—

language winged like pagodas, lines played for wood-block prints of Tokaido
traffic, teahouse courtesans, bombastic actors. Didn't see Hiroshima. Or Nagasaki.

Sound a gong, lay a blossom on the lily pond of the Golden Pavilion—for
                Roddy,

Brodsky and André Tanker. For these gracious, courteous, transmigrated souls,
                  pour a rice saké
as you pass the Shinto shrine near your hotel. These lives line your work, as ours—
shoguns and faithful companions following some Minshall dragonfly muse, from
                 Gulag to Santa Cruz,
faith drawing our straggling band to this sepulchral escarpment—as in some "View
       from Moule à Chique, after Hokusai." Or, after Apilo.

V.

"The only art left is the preparation of grace."

(DW)

Did Blake see angels sitting in the neighbours' trees?
Did an angel smile at me on a train platform in cold Boston one Winter?
Will Christ come with Ezekiel's four-faced seraphim and their fiery wheels?

In this dark networking age, the schoolmen assassinate the Author, desecrate the
                  groves of wonder,
scrabble on their bellies to find significance in the dung of scarabs; in columns of sneers,
they sniff out apostasy, line-up heretics, trigger disputes. Orwell warned
us of those tenured tyrants. Come Virgil and Dante, Aesop and Pascal, come griots
               and chantwèls, come Ti Jean and Anancy,
come, fireflies peeping from evening bush of Monchy, chase 'way those soucouyants!
We passing through Vanity Fair...