McDonald


"You have the caiman fever bad."
(How can she know my deep-down dream?)
Her old bright eyes turn full on me:
"Caiman fever shake the bone."
She has the cure for me she says,
Cold water from a baked earth jar,
A pinch of golden powdering.
A dip of lemon grass put in:
Drink it off in one great gulp.
Taste of woodsmoke
And old nights
Moon in cloud-scud
Red jasper round the throat.



The powder like a golden dust
She pinches carefully from a stone box
With sacred ointments and white spider cloth:
Caiman's penis dried golden in the sun
Scraped to powder on a fish's spine
It's chased the fever
Down a thousand years
I will not dream the great beasts anymore.





 5



 Carib Bones

Ten miles along a logger's trail,
Greenheart in flower smelling rich and sweet,
A camp abandoned long ago
Has nowadays a few huts rotted by the rain.
Enter the chief hut by a slack-nail ladder.
Three old men squatting down like stones
Convey a welcome with their shrunken eyes.
We squat and take small gourds of drink
Brewed wild cashew and sapodilla skins.
The ramblings of the old men grow wild
Soon others leave to hunt the angry pigs