Poetry: V. Ramsamooj Gosine

V. Ramsamooj Gosine

Early Morning

I silently watch
A sleepy town crawl to its beat
From night hovels they creep out
Half-naked tattered smeared
Gums grinding tins swinging
Man hollering woman tumbling
Near roadside fires for steaming coffee

I silently watch
A sleepy town alive on foot
Erect on grey folding tables
Jostling for pavement space
Each an army from the brown hills
Screaming for the town’s limited
Until the lawmakers in haste
Or for display bark age old orders
Or passers-by curse their indifference
Of the children of long escapees

I silently watch
Bonnets emerge from hill streets
Dead night all for the L.A. gifted
Roaming displaying whistling for jobs
The sea’s sweeping coldness
No obstacles to their prized adventures
Of these brave women of abandoned kids
In mosquito infested jungle huts
Searching for rich oil money
From pot-bellied aging half-awake men
The country’s one-sided banks
The nation’s wealth in their pockets

I silently watch
Overflowing dew-cold benches
Where early far away clerks
Breakfast on promenade doubles
Happily chattering dream exchanging
In rising sunshine from Mt. Anaparima
A curious crowd of energetic ones
Helplessly sweating for a daily pittance
From fallen black gold
Yesterday’s single trough
***







Message of the Stars

I know these sleeping people
Who aren’t dreamers
 For to dream is to fantasize
Is to point to a centre

I know of these child-bearing
Scavengers in a busy world
Of slum-thinking sinking
Surrounded by the city’s waste
Day in day out
Merciless grime the dust
Water zig-zagging clogged
An intolerable journey
Waiting for the ashes

But I’ve known of another
Oh. He’s bubbling as never before
For one bright peeping night
A tiny hole in the roof
He saw the smiling twinkling stars
Of today’s birth
And he longed to touch them
Oh. He’s climbing to touch them.

And focused in his new vision
Chipped for years with his old hammer
For years cramped but a spirited one
And so he chipped and chipped
Until he saw a starry silver
Happily emerging
Smiling beckoning
The gift of joy
***

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Setu, August 2020