Victim
‘Woman hold her head and cry
cause her son had been
shot down in the street
and died
Just because of the system.’
Bob Marley, Johnny Was
The victim
waits;
he is fired in his tracks
fixed
stopped
stretched out;
the bush grows into his wounds.
He is riddled with a truth
that all will share. Once, he
crawled on his belly
now
slowly he becomes tired of the crab
antics that scratch the surface
of his skin
plunge him into a rash of
indecision
imprecation.
Th family line is broken
again,
fractured like his skull. He
longs for water,
the bay leaf baths,
his mother rubbing him.
He is at the stand-pipe
blue soap and
practised fingers
cleanse him. Now
he lies in the
bed of a river
with his throat cut
his energy leaving him.
He is floating in his
flaming silence,
a shot has fired him.
The mother looks at her son
and the eye bleeds;
she stoops and wipes
the jumbie beads of
sweat
whips the running ants
and waits.
The guerillas
wait
Kojak waits
for the cameras’ flashing
flame of
approval.
The corbeaux wait
but not for the rain,
as
the eye bleeds
water
as from a broken branch
while the bullets rip, nail,
leave wales
welts,
hammer the home-grown truth
mock the imported disaster
that grabs the
head-lines
the eyes of the statistical bureau
while
the dead leaves in the
garden go unmourned,
the vines’ murder of the trees,
the garden slugs strangled by
Aldrin
do not make The Bomb;
the stone lizard
does not capture the reporter’s
vigorous search
for the news,
the blight engulfing the hibiscus
will not make tonight’s TV
panorama
as the hills mourn
the ghost opf their existence
in smoke.
A door slams;
wheels
turn.
Her eye breeds
water;
faith;
takes root
takes years.
Blood.
Victor D Questel
Victor D Questel (1949 – 1982) was from Trinidad. This poem is from his 1979 collection Near Mourning Ground, published by The New Voices.
