PHOTOGRAPHING RUINS ON PARADISE ISLAND, BAHAMAS

A colonist, homesick for Europe

shipped the ruins of a medieval cloister

to Paradise Island to remind himself

of the heritage he'd lost in what he called

a savage tropic land. One hand shadowing

her neoclassic features, a marble Persephone

in exile, longing for the harsh familiarity of winter,

gazes homeward across the immutable

aquamarine bell curve of sea and sky.

I came here because it sounded exotic.

Nearby, someone begins to play the piano.

Waves of clapping echo from the terraced garden

sloping seaward to where the slow speech of water

foams over the reef. High tea under palm trees

and a preoccupation of things British.

Lace trimming the uniform of the Black maid

serving coconut cake crackles like paper doilies

on the grass like unseasonable snow.

Another wave of gentry feeds from her dark hands.

Tea leaves in the cup arranged in familiar patterns.

Music wafts through knit branches of immigrant casuarinas.

This hand uncovers ghosts

of transplanted nuns, five centuries dead,

starched habits rustling like palm fronds,

wandering down corridors open to balmy skies,

who are puzzled by the perpetual weather

and the presence of lovers on a moss-covered marble couch,

their skin covered with green except the places

where admirers have touched for good luck.

I am voyeur to the other side of paradise.

On the docks, thin boys dressed in polyester rags,

new poverty from the age of technology,

sell pink-lipped conch shells to tourists,

and they pirate water at night from park spigots

because brackish wells are no longer sweet.

A terrestrial paradise, transformed by slave ships.

Hoarded iron stained these white columns,

and rusted shackles blossomed in this sea.

Death is not a practitioner of apartheid.

It strips skin from bones of Blacks and Whites with equanimity.

Intrigued by the contrast, I photograph

a jacket slung over a marble railó

sleeves luffing in the wind like a boat without oars.

With his mattock, a gardener dresses the thin soil

where only limestone endured the ravages of cotton

and sugar cane plantations. Molasses, rum and oranges.

His hands coax tender English grass into fecundity.

Beneath my palm, pitted marble columns weather

under tropical sun, like coral, like bone.

I dreamed my mother called out to me

and a conch shell sounded nine times

to call the fish back home to the burial ground.

5/85 Bahamas rev. 87
1989 The Caribbean Writer, Vol 3


first draft

PHOTOGRAPHING RUINS ON PARADISE ISLAND, BAHAMAS

This hand uncovers ghosts-- 
I photograph a jacket slung over a marble rail,
sleeves luffing in the wind
like a boat without oars.
Still, I can hear the drone of his voice
and muffled clapping in the terraced garden
that slopes down to the sea
where the slow speech of waves foams over the reef.
Under the starched rustle of palm fronds, a maid serves pastries
and piano music drifts through the casaurina trees.
I wait for the statue of Persephone
to emerge into sunlight, with one hand shadowing her face
to walk down these long corridors roofed with clouds
and listen to the man reading poetry in her garden.
She has stood in rapt attention for so long,
her marbled features have softened.
Hoarded iron from slave ships stain these white columns
and rust shavings blossom in the sea.
I dreamed my mother called out to me
and a conch shell sounded nine times
to call the fish back home to the burial ground.

Nuns, Paradise Island