Devon House

Kingston, Jamaica

Lamps have begun to light as evening,

alluvial, fills every crevice in the courtyard,

fills Devon House, alone with its marble columns,

its verandas and esplanades empty,

the plantation gone, and the fields,

the courtyard a tourist attraction now:

glass ashtrays etched with boys

too large to be clambering coconut trees,

statuettes of women too smooth to be burdened

with baskets of fruit on their heads, stoneware

with doctor birds captured in the shallowest bas-relief,

key rings carved in the rough shape of the island;

and now even the hummingbirds are spoken of as jewels

where once everyone drowned in leaf-filtered sunlight.

Source: The Day Underneath the Day (TriQuarterly Books, 2001)