Easter Weekend in Debe

Toodesh Ramesar

I woke up. It was raining. The cocks were asleep.
I wasn’t hungry, except for the hollow raw in my stomach for poetry.
Good Friday, a holiday, houses shuttered like chicken pens,
scattered corn-grain chores awakening slowly as the light drizzle.
A shrouded grey sky winning the duel with the sun.
Eye-red streaks of blood dripping from a few clouds.
An amplified car announcing a fete, Dyanamic General Wassie, free.
I beginning to feel is a morning for beer, not coffee or tea.

I knew it would rain. Been waiting for it to burst from the sky.
It hung in the air for days. It was in the white mist of the moon.
Saw it in the huddled stroll of the fowls, smelled it from the goats.
Wondered at its coming from the two-three dottings of the yellow

poui.

Counted the open-armed cracks of earth with my feet, my

meanderings.

Their begging for appeasement, brown dying for green.
These are my pastures, it is here that I feed, and stroll.

Christ, look at the price of red fish. Murder, thieving murder.
Greed greater than demand. Make your kill today, profit.
A fish-market crowd of voices, the flying silver scales of scrapers.
From the chopping blocks to the shrouded rap of old newspapers.
Into car trunks, seal the smells away from the polished exterior.
Squish, squish, the wet noise of tires driving them away.
Stopped at the drugstore for Panadol, Multi-symptom,
and the drizzle of rain comes and goes, Christ, like a headache.

Saw my reflection in a pool of water, two quivering electric wires,
some water-gun drops dripping from an eave, the squish of crowded

maxis

in chorus, choiring to the beach, a holiday-gathering of a crowd.
Of fun-lovers, rum-drinkers, sea-bathers, in-for-the-lime-riders.
“Drive, stop after you cross the junction.”

Copyright © Toodesh Ramesar