from ‘Intimations’

Image courtesy of John Robert Lee

“When, dear, you have gone”

“I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity…”
~ Francis Thompson, ‘The Hound of Heaven’

When, dear, you have gone
far beyond dwarf planets
galaxies of diaphanous nebula
and incomparable deeps
of incredible space —
this one book I have been writing
since you met me in the midday of my journey
confused and without direction
in a maze of deep ravines
and dead rivers,
sucked dry, cast away
by soucouyants and devil women
without remembered names,
and you took me into the house
of your sloe-eyed laughter and your faith
and loved me —
this one book I have been writing
in canticles kwéyòl
dancing lines of lakonmèt and weedova
their violons and chak-chak in my ear,
an epistle of a testament
to your Wonderful King, the Maker of the spheres —
this one book you will see
in His compassionate Hands
and hear Him read for you
the inadequate, untranslatable
unsayable words of my gratitude
for you, my love, my faith companion,
my gift of His incomprehensible grace.

~ John Robert Lee

John Robert Lee is a writer of prose, poetry, journalism; a librarian; and a former radio and television broadcaster. His latest publications are ‘elemental: new and selected poems,  1975-2007’ ( Peepal Tree Press, 2008), ‘Sighting and other poems of faith’ (Mahanaim, 2013) and ‘Bibliography of St. Lucian Creative writing: 1948-2013’ (Mahanaim, 2013). His bibliography of Caribbean literature is available here.