South Beach: Proteus, S-Shaped in the Sand

  Over clear water sun burns soundlessly;
sun-soaked children play in Miami sand.
He plays dead and they believe him to be.

A retired old man listening to voices in the sea
offers nothing to young girls seeking a tan.
Over clear water sun burns soundlessly.

His groggy subconscious wearily
rises like slow water over a dam.
Playing dead and believing himself to be,

he dreams of round stones and broken pottery
of sea life, of one legged cranes stand-
ing over clear water.  The sun burns soundlessly,

as shameless cries of Cubans heavy
the afternoon heat and crowds expand.
But he plays dead and believes himself to be

listening to the sirens, to the history
of wave, to the system of sorrow spread like a fan
over clear water.  But sun burns soundlessly,
though he plays dead and they believe him to be.

                                           Yvonne Sapia (1983)

Through the garbled signals
of a transistor radio
my mother kept for hurricanes like this,
but never like this,
we scan for the next location
of ice, water, food and catch
the edge of a Caribbean tinged
station, fragments of a Marley tune
"No woman, nuh cry, everything's
gonna be all right," and my son,
barely nine months, who cut a tooth
while Andrew gnawed through the Grove,
dances with his mother
by the glow of a kerosene lamp,
preserved through airport terminals,
garage sales, and, as the window
splintered, the house glittered
for a moment before the walls
fell flat, stood on the mantle
of the fireplace we never used.
In the midst of the rubble
these, our only heirlooms, bind us
against the darkness outside,
all that she could ever give,
all that we could ever pass on
or possess: this light, this music.
                               
                        Geoffrey Philp (1994)

Seascape

This celestial seascape, with white herons got up as angels,

flying as high as they want and as far as they want sidewise

in tiers and tiers of immaculate reflections;

the whole region, from the highest heron

down to the weightless mangrove island

with bright green leaves edged neatly with bird-droppings

like illumination in silver,

and down to the suggestively Gothic arches of the mangrove roots

and the beautiful pea‑green back‑pasture

where occasionally a fish jumps, like a wild‑flower

in an ornamental spray of spray;

this cartoon by Raphael for a tapestry for a Pope:

it does look like heaven.

But a skeletal lighthouse standing there

in black and white clerical dress,

who lives on his nerves, thinks he knows better.

He thinks that hell rages below his iron feet,

that that is why the shallow water is so warm,

and he knows that heaven is not like this.

Heaven is not like flying or swimming,

but has something to do with blackness and a strong glare

and when it gets dark he will remember something

strongly worded to say on the subject.

                                                                     Elizabeth Bishop

Christ in the Sun  
(A Spanish padre is sick with fever in the New World.)

Since in our great forests we have no roads
Nor cities, we have dreamed of a land of sun
Merely; though a paradise with neither Christ
Nor a Christian is Satan's work, an illusion of lust
 That stirs fantasies as fever stirs my blood
 And tempts to conquest, a test for Christian man.

The primitive men we find here are, to us, new men,
Though old world men are also new here.  These roads
Bewilder my brain.  The vessels of my blood
 Are inflamed by the naked savages and their sun.
God tempts us with false freedom; the rank lust
Of old Adam, my enemy, hopes to win me from Christ.

But I will preach them Christ! Christ! Christ!
 As the stern fathers did me, from boy to man,
Until I, until they, are stronger than our lust,
Or Christ is stronger in us than these false roads
And these pagan chants, these dances to the sun,
Like these tempers, are purged from our dark blood.

"O Father, take this darkness from my blood
And brain, make bright for me, in me, Christ's
Pure Light.  The simple light of their sun
Must be our darkness.  O what is man
That delusion in him can take such subtle roads
He cannot know love from a lie, faith from lust?"

They did receive us freely, despite their lust
For the flesh.  Though crude, they have a gentle blood,
 A child's pulse for earth and creatures.  Their roads
Leave no scars.  They have small property.  Like Christ
They would rather give than receive.  Their shamans
Say they walk in the light of two worlds, two suns.

Yet it is like Eden, this place, with its warm sun,
Its flowers, flesh, fruit, fresh streams.  Is it lust
 To breathe too deeply, is the faith that cools my blood
Then also false that it can enrage a man
 Against such outward grace in the joined names of Christ
And that dreamed life to which death is the one road.

Here, where the one road is the sun's road,
Spain, torn between goldlust and Christ lust,
Drives its two-edged sword into every man's blood.

                              Van K. Brock (1979)