Lyrics
Later, after I had careened across the roundabout
cfter I had looked at several photographs
cnd vintage film of who I thought
Were my aunt and grandmother
In their dance of golden green and purple
cnd the blinding white of their smiles
Their hands with bracelets and fingers twirling in Technicolor
cgainst board house and incline 1967 on the valley road the cocoa rose
The island reel
Years, long before I had left that house
Of cut glass and cinnamon
before I had lived in the single room of darkness and obscurity
Or in the house in the sky
Where a cat stretched out her limbs and turned her head to die
Long, years before this
I was riding across an intersection
Swerving to the right and hot against suspense
With the breath of engines on my back
Rode on till I was older
Once I saw a bus
Cut a boy in two
Separate the bones of his thigh from any region of love or life
Torn out and threshing and yet the boy lived
But from then was drawn dumb and mournful for walking
In fact I was alone on the avenue
Neither aunt or grandmother
Had appeared in those films
Nor in the incense taxi I drove
ccross the savannah
But yet they continued
To whisper
Like muscle in the air