from the MS The Summer of LilacsAuthor(s): ANTHONY McNEILSource: Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 1/2, The 60th Anniversary Edition: Literature andIdeas (March - June, 2008), p. 130Published by: University of the West Indies and Caribbean QuarterlyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40655162 .

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130

from the MS The Summer of Lilacs

This is my lilac, echoing Whitman: : the first poem in months. But poem's misleading: : it's really a work ofthat sheer genre I fashioned, : , language-in-music. It combines the two hills, stretching abysses Don't be put off by the odd punctuation. The stops of language in-music are strict and precise. How can one colon suffice when

exactly twice a pause is required? Seems silly to me to stay in off music when a lark could sing thru the work

In a poem by Galway Kinnell the persona eats the turd of a bear to stave off starvation. I wonder at hunger so black. Stories emerge of

shipwrecked men drawing lots to see who next will be eaten,. Such an act must shake the whole cosmos. If sharks could read such aberrant minds, even the lethalest white might stop his meal for the moment. Although it's immortal, perhaps the thing weeps

Patrice, my son; and Lucy, my mother. If either died I would curse the loveliest flowers. I would curse the sapphire sea. As far as I go death is some recalcitrant madness. The bodily rhythm of every last one is clearly eternal: heartbeat and breath.

One day ghosts will quit us, wreath upon wreath, then all will be dancers on the green earth

ANTHONY . McNEIL

Vol.29. No.2, June 1983.

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