GOLD
for Wilson Harris
Girls wear on their wrists the gold
That Raleigh dreamed of
El Dorado glints in your eyes
Hints of the water between gravel
And pan
Dust of a ground mountain’s Dream. Men have died angry,
Screaming the guts of their power, lusting the bright
stone. History drowned your flesh here in a mesh
Of brown rivers: the pirates have gone;
The pilots remain on the rivers: watching
Rocks, hearing the cataract whisper
And crack. The gold remains hidden:
The vision of guilt driven deep into under-
Ground silts. But the tips of the roots.
Reaching light, licking green, nourishing
Features of vein, leaves and forest,
Give lips to the secrets of fear.
In the secrets of forests,
Glint falling on leaf, birds’ harvests
Of song, flowers’ tendrils nourishing
The gloom, bloom of blossom, shoots
Of odours in the damp plunder
Of sting, butterfly’s wing hidden
Under sudden rushes of sound, there comes the whisper
Of footsteps, eyes of the past watching
Our journey over the soft fallen bone
Of liana, obstinate thickets. The eyes wear flesh
Rounded by memory out of bright sockets of history;
Their lips silenced by time, conqueror’s dust,
Recover their teeth and their consonants; vowels of
Angry Breath break from their lame
Wilted faces; babel
Of leaves cry their warnings the tribe dies
Whose faith of green crumples; love
Of the good soil humbled by its gold.