for Anson Gonzalez
Hey Anson, w’happen’? I hear you gone an dead!
That’s a dramatic move, boy. No comin’ back from that!
An’ me here mekin’ foolishness again.
I back on the island—well in truth is a different island
but you know, sun hot, breeze cool, sea chill
an’ all the res’ is pacotille, ’nanci stories
we all tell ourselves ’bout identity an destiny
and who did what to who and who owe who
and who have whichsoever God on their side.
I guess that all looks pretty sad and foolish
from where you’re sitting? From here too, truth to tell.
Anyway, partner, as you were.
I sittin’ here in the shade on a wide verandah,
looking out over cane-field stubble, rain clouds
teasing, an’ a cold drink in my hand…
and I thinking about you, boy….
Of course, for me to call you so is affectation,
pure mamaguy. But at least we two
know it’s a game we’re playing. A masquerade,
a pantomime. Just like how Hector Mannix
enter a lion! (You know I like to get a Walcott
reference in—is a kind of reverse validation.)
So now that’s out the way we can talk,
“Mano to Mano”—(you see what I did there?)
But I forgot you gone an dead! What can I say?
Back here the world is crazy, so nothing new.
When we first wrote each other, Anson,
alongside hurricanes and earthquakes,
Americans were fighting still in Viet Nam,
Manley new in charge in Jamaica
and The Doc just halfway through in T&T.
Watergate unfolding…but what the hell,
Sobers was playing for the West Indies still
and we two set up hand-cranked poetry mags
on tiny islands, a Caribbean ocean apart,
making contact and aiming to change the world.
I suppose there’s hope in that, isn’t there?
Such innocence and energy and optimism and faith
that the world could be changed, and by poetry…,
When I try to explain it to postcolonial folk—
our belief in “the culture of the poem”
beyond race and class and national identities—
it just sounds dotish. But you know what I mean.
Anson, man, I wish you could come back for a day
like Walcott’s Spoiler (see, that’s three!)
and smartarse answer back again, again. And again
I’m missing the banter, the old talk repartee.
Look like this death thing serious, boy, no joke.