FOR TRINIDAD: A BLUES

Brand new year they say
but sun born again – 
Como ayer (we are in Venezuela).
Here the sea still rolling cigarillos
promises too loudly, delivering just ash.

There the posters selling carnival
now mask the Christmas bills, a clash
of leaves from one broken book – 
endlessly repapering
the gaps in our existence.

Here el presidente say to tinker
with the fingernails of time.
There, Britannic myth transcribed
inscribes the need for great
apostrophes on time.

In time, a pause
becomes a mispronunciation
of time’s unwritten sentence.
Trinidad, church of new day cynics, talking
Three green hills back into bluesy water.

Anything is possible for those who believe.
A drowning man will clutch at 
pieces of a broken rosary – calypso,
and Pan and roti – all we ting – if
he but knows that he is drowning.

Wen de I-land hit sea-bottom
will be time to choose a different paradise.
Here they bend the arms of time. So adios.
I must return to treat with drowning cascadoo
And promise good at intervals: a final

Auld lang
sign – 
play mas
un ron y una cancion:
a soca blues.



Ian Dieffenthaller

from Crossed Suns