Oracabessa
By Paul Cameron Brown
An iron wrought gate of turpentine force conveys little pigment,
almost black parchment letters mindful of
hands, arched and stroked from the very stone, until an
elephantine water runs nettle sand to their granite perch.
The broiling heat in this part of the Indies one knows must,
posthaste, carry to the humus and flies any modicum of human remains.
And, over distant dispatch of time, the elongated sprawl of waves dashing up straight to the shallow's grave, makes
memory drawn, any record of the little parish's dead flimsy
in the topsy context of soil and undulant peat.
A greened isle stares past the feckless scene, past again an
aged church noticeboard that scrapes out traces of news
worthy of import to the wormy road.
Whitewash, the colour of the shackled crypts, casts upon
the church a pallor of distraught gray.
A goat is seen foraging between such marker stones.
The day seems to cut into the marble white detachment
of the sarcophagi with abrupt candor.
Yet, while the cove pokes like a walking stick, the sun &
earth conspire to reclaim this space as their rightful bread.
A huge vegetative urge to growth is witness to abundant
further life - life in whorls of bamboo shoot, naseberry
thatches & canebreak all garnished a short stride across the barrier gate.