Aftershocks

for Dionne Brand

No rescue. Escape was the farthest
She could come, away
from that island—that chance
she would take on that stone
in her hand, on a place
with no one she knew.
So perhaps the signs were all
reflex, the habit of aftershocks
Bare in a new world,
she was given what could not
last without the lye of her,
bloodlines, anyplace
recalled, memory had etched
the tunnels of a nameful hundred,
rivers gulling the roads, before
the miracle of driftwood, malls & factories,
rooms pregnant with all.
Familiar, the ranking plumes that vanish—
leaving us curled—
what we long for
is hard to explain.
Like false pentameters
credo on our cupid’s bow,
what wild continent names
another place that sees
the barren clearing claimed
& loved. What psalms us
to spend our many selves in code
or water, vernacular & captive
Leaves her new century
Relic: by another life,
made-up enough to strike
star-music against the weight
of her island, like the sampled
high-pitched moan of the Dodo
as it falls into that chasm of loss.
Linger, my sandmaker breath
Slap up against the walls of this house
Fill her up here
in the city or two-thirds out
at a distance’s abrupt portrait
for which her names would not do
& what have I? Have I forgotten too
what that thick slab of noise
drowns and drowns beneath
her age. A passage
For the persisting flesh—already locked
& knocking in its burned metal slip—
Singe winter against the spring
& now the birds are not
the little things with tunes
about the horror of mountains.
Linger: ocean, voodoo sea,
why end here with morning
Now hold her with whatever is left
Whatever trembles with a noise
Nobody but the radiator makes
No usual sound of crickets, frogs
& chorus of beetle—keep
the cry of whatever now lives
alone with the matchbox’s
crude apostrophe, mantle & heat on her
wreath at the great road’s hush
There is no rescue—
Rescue is too much to ask
Of anywhere—