George Elliott Clarke
For Oni Joseph
Robert Sandiford snaps my colourized photo
at grey-stone St. Matthias Anglican Church
just outside sea-bleached Bridgetown, Barbados.
Whimsically, we stopped here because Austin C.
Clarke was a boy here. The sun’s now as white
as the stones where Bro’ Austin worshipped
an Anglo-Saxon Christ, his stiff upper lip never
trembling when the whips and spears struck.
And there’s the sapphire sea, a lowered sky,
blue jewellery, sparking mid dark-green trees,
and the sea churns white among the grey stones,
and the Parliament is a whited sepulchre
at the slave auction site where it now sits,
while the Atlantic crows at blanching sand,
And then Robert’s auto dies, forcing us to walk,
cursing, blaspheming, in Austin’s footsteps.