Key West violent isle … coral
and blood-long since of caravel-
chewed by violet currents:
contrast-your tropical prerogative-
is here: sly Cuban and blue-eyed Conch
are here . . . natives of something indecipherable,
hint of the sun’s face, perhaps,
where tides of gas through eternal light
and heat erupt yet salvage peace
such as is found at the heart of fire. . . .
Spontaneous pearl, or bird-link caracara,
strange sport of nature neither here nor there:
last key, last bone of island vertebrae,
yet neither land nor sea
but should you dig
in coral soil one fathom down,
a burst of liquid amethyst would geyser through
-I have seen water in the streets that is the sea….
And so, at night, passing through white streets
spread out like sleeping beasts,
heavy with aimlessness,
my heels made no sound, and by bougainvillea
of old houses with pitched roofs
I wandered, lush constellations sagging
low, bulging, almost, to touch the eaves.
Hot breezes swept the Spanish Main,
entering the reticule of palms and laughing bars,
juke box excitement of sailors in summer white
catching the brine’s urge, sea swell in hard loins-
while friendly loping Negroes in tight jeans
accosted one another with bright teeth
smiling, glinting gold,-rum visionaries!-
how they howl in church, black Sindbad sinners,—
mystical and proud, and dirty, too,
they hug this jasmine isle with grateful clasp,
pleased, oh pleased, the mainland stars
but not its stripes
are over their broad backs to bear. …
O southern Key! where freedom is a lazy plant
by typhoon skies and pirate waters fed,
whose vital blossom has a tender lip
which all may kiss,-
upon the shore I knelt,
by pampas grass and thatched cabanas
mumbling, This is the staunch island,
windswept as a mind with no location;
by the skeletons of sea-change
haunted; set upon as subway-rushers leap
on dusk: elemental, dogged by ghosts,
embodiment of death
at life’s center, this is the island
naked before violence as the cultured heart;
green monsters of the deep lie from my hand-
outstretched, dilated,- -waves away-
yet
here I felt my childhood surging through
the dikes of terror, and through the ice
of thought had melted
the adult behavior of indifference.
Manhood raging with a need for love
grew when the wrecked childhood like debris
had gone aground
and slimed the future possibility
and left an ineffectual mind..
Toward shores potential, so our lives
have raged: whatever island we have sought
to ease the burden of our eyes
that inward turning finding a hostile court
of errors, falsities, and poseur weaknesses
sitting in tacit judgment, patient, wise. . . .
The meanings we have dared not face
at last, O island, come back with the tide-
we find, within eternal flux
and languid grace of such repose
as winds and oceans furl,
the answer to our speed and darkness
and our luxury of sin:
a world in flower and, in seed, a mind.
But I remember times more angular-
the neurasthenic flora of the deep
recall those tentacles of hate the cities wave
and stretch, and clutching, suck your spirit
in: the stone of horror, terrible for life,
surrounded me.
Housefronts and schoolrooms,
Others’ worldly good I always saw from far
and psychopathic cities breeding war. . . .
Half-lit, but more in shadows,
living showed a face that split,
and shared no secret, dwelt in fear,
and saved desire like a hobby.
Which, natural, sought a tunnel for escape,
and failing beauty’s esprit de corps, read
maps, timetables and geography:
love of body shifted into love of lore.
But danger blossomed from the leaves
of travel; roads I saw
pour mile on mile
of sun and rail and stone
yet not the adjacent calm of earth.
And there was talk of bombs when I arrived.
That day the bathers, luminous with sun,
fled the white beaches; loungers in hotels
forgot the poker and the rum;
hysteria and dusk together fell
violent, in riot-flashing hues
that shivered through the evening’s spine:
leaving nor place nor time to choose-
And now the exile and the derelict
beneath a menace from vindictive blue
find, in their wasted gifts, an equal fate
with sheriff, politician,-hate
has equalled all, at last, huddled together
from the blundering of greed and will;
the modern climax, tragic, doctrinaire,
resolves with grace the wish to kill.
At midnight unseen dogs began to howl;
fenders with dimmers touched unwary thighs;
corners of streets showed uniforms like posts
but dangerous, excited, scanning skies
for grief
-the island had exploded now-
no bridges lead immunely from the nerves
-I saw fly outward into opal glow
my dream of safety, martyred, still unwon.
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