The boy who heard, understood
And never said a word;
Heard songs of Orpheus
In head and wind;
Who in summer, swam river,
Swam sea, caught crayfish with mermaid
Tails in deep, foreboding, forest pools
Of rippling blue and green, emerald
And crystal-clear, cool water fall-
In’ like lovers, head over hills,
Over rocks of stippled hues;
Travelled universes and ages
With words that flew off pages
In chariots of paper wings,
Big sister, Elva’s history books,
Borrowed tomes and terms
To claim and own,
Burrowed among the leaves
Like tattoo foraging for food
In sweet potato beds, vines
Etched, indelible, on skin
Of worlds within the mind;
Soared and floated, frigate birds
And fork-tailed terns in fine formation,
Plummeted with precision,
Straight for the whites of salt
And spray and eyes
Of salmon dreams’
Steep dives and leaps;
Lobsters in the reefs
Iguanas on the beach
Recurring lucid dreams;
The boy who lived in different worlds,
Travelled and discovered,
Matched strides with Marco Polo,
Fathomed Vernal mysteries
Fathoms below the sea
And miles inside the molten earth;
Suffered bitter gall, betrayal,
Jealousy of the blackamoor,
Mourned William’s Othello,
Full of dole and tragedy;
Put soldier to the sword
And assegai,
Genghis Khan,
Shaka Zulu,
Alexander, Hannibal with elephants’
Indomitable advance,
Crushed provinces like puny ants,
Marched many gruelling miles,
Raid and rule along the way,
Razed whole cities, black and brown,
Right down to the burning ground
And to the cruel stomp of drums,
Planted flags on burial mounds;
Read grim stories from the Brothers Grimm,
Norse mythology and lore,
Erik the Red, Ragnarok and Thor,
Spartans and Gods of ancient Greece,
Pyramids and sphinxes,
Egyptian jinx and fixes,
Exodus to freedom from
Inquisition and martyrdom,
Pirates and priests of ancient Rome;
And came back closer home
To buccaneers like Blackbeard,
Came back home to Miguel Street,
A Hindu street with Christian name,
Came back home to L’Anse Fourmi,
An English ville with Patois name
And relics of indigo days
And memories of bloody bays;
Lonely ghosts of long lost
Jumbies, Anansi stories,
And on and on and on
The boy goes on and on
Into the man, become the song.
Copyright ©2011 by G. Newton V. Chance
- G. NEWTON V. CHANCE
- George Newton Vivian Chance (Trinidad and Tobago) -- member of the Poet Society of Trinidad and Tobago, http://poetssocietytt.blogspot.com/ and the World Poets Society, http://world-poets.blogspot.com/ -- born in Tobago on 3rd March 1957. While residing at Rio Claro was inspired to write over a hundred poems at the turn of the Millennium. Hobbies include playing wind instruments, building computers, observing nature, reading and writing poetry. Believes that the power of a song is in its ability to evoke emotions by the marriage of lyric and music but that music without lyric can be just as powerful, that lyric without music can also be just as powerful, that there is music in the lyric and that lyric can be simple yet profound. Also, in this the age of computers, would like to model his lines after simple and efficient code and, analogous to Object Oriented Programming, achieve most of his imagery from nouns and verbs, avoiding the bloat and excess of unnecessary adjectives. This is what he aspires to attain in his poetry.
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