SARGASSO


And fish the clear, cold, black as satin streams.
The old men begin a chorused chant:
Memories of remembering their father's father's tales.



The old men squat scratching withered genitals,
Sucking pipes of scented, strong tobacco.
Black tongues lick across half-blackened gums.
The chant rises, falls, whispers, shouts
And ends
Where it begins
And they are stone again.



The Caribs were the great ones,
Greater than the tall trees,
No forest man would conquer them.
Out of the arm-bones of their enemies
They made flutes to sing their triumphs.
Courage was dear to them as life
Their war-songs sang of bravery alone:
No word for cruelty except for "love of pain."
Before they chose a warrior
They sliced his skin and rubbed in pepper bush,
Tied him in a hammock filled with tiger ants,
And if he made a sound he failed.
Fear they did not know,
Death they despised, a puny thing.
Battle was good:
To feel the heart beat fast
Was life itself,
The sweetness and the song of life.
The hearts of men they killed,
Dried in fires made of wood and jaguar bone,
They pounded into "chieftain's dust"
To drink with shining eyes like blood.
And when great warriors died
Their bodies wrapped in snake-skin shrouds
Washed and watched by chosen women
Rotted slowly under suns and moons
Until the flesh was ready to shred off
Then women cleaned the bones as bright as dawn.
Painted the clean bones gold of sun and earthen black