after the screaming bombs have stopped falling
& the rifle mouths have fallen silent
this island you have made still reverberates
resonates with your violence, an echo
a cycle, the newspeople tell us a thing
is not the thing our eyes tell us it is
a campaign of erasure, of making
the map tell lies of the land—
our hands betray us & above the sky
circles its prey, how do you devour
a planet (?)
tonight I watch a dreadlocked banana
farmer defy a monster I talk to
Jah he says, the machete’s ebony
blade dangling from his waist
all around him
the naked trees stand like figures in frieze
each stalk has been shorn clean of its branches
an estate unmade—
blood-rooted, salt route,
a forest of fingers pointing to Jah (!)
everything I see now is a temple
a new way, to try unmake the monster
but the rifle mouths still detest silence
and the screaming bombs have not stopped falling