Resurrection, Kingston, 1980
Poetry by Kwame Dawes
By Kwame Dawes | Posted: August 02, 2005
After the year of cataclysm, the walls of this city
are scarred with green and orange hieroglyphs of hate,
the tragic lies of false prophets; the rubble,
the stones, the air still thick with last breaths -
800 blasted lives - and palms and bells, rods
and anthems strewn around, the detritus
of celebration we won't ever understand.
We have bled out our peace. Those nights
we trembled, remember? The righteous
and the fallen have fled. The city
is dusty, broken after years of neglect.
How we suffered for a dream, recycled
our glad rags into simpler things-
Such sacrifices we made in that valiant,
austere decade. The season of cataclysm
still haunts our city, and we dance
our spastic Restoration, a world of vain
hope: the coke, the untrammeled
sex, and in this world shadows
reach across our secret pleasures,
the last hours of healing. So little to love.
I travel this city with a stone for a tongue,
watching the light of a new moon.
I travel this road, with the limp of a survivor.
Sometimes the backfire of a car leaves me
washed with fear, my heart and head pulsing.
I walk through the gate of my old school--
once my sanctuary from the city--now alien.
It has been a year and everything seems
so trite, so malformed and rough hewn.
I pass through the rusting gates
framed by the languorous ficus berry trees
the sound of an old doomsday hymn,
the schoolboy contraltos lamenting
in my head.
Dear Jesus, this place smells
of revival and death. I come through the gate
with faith--tomorrow it shall be tested.
Holy Spirit, breathe on me, breathe on me!
It is six and dusk, Simms Building is alabaster
in the gloom. This silver deadness
is the sepulchre of the unrisen dead. I see you,
Mastermind, leaning against the tongueless
bell, your eyes too alert for reason.
“Resurrection, Kingston, 1980” is from New and Selected Poems 1994-2002, Kwame Dawes' 14th publication by Peepal Tree Press
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