Two poems

By Vahni Capildeo

.

Night in the Gardens

Oxford and Port of Spain

The river murmurs.
On the instant all is flattened.
Nightfall conjures up the flood it is not.
Riding high   best survivors   the glass houses
somewhere to the east   containing reptile climates
floating leaves great as gongs able to support
one who’d wish to stand on water
if he’s one of the cloud-skinned casually destructive kind
spinning a discus on one finger   stepping even
lighter than
lightly
illuminated you.
Rising high   buildings anxious as with knowledge
of new gravity   weigh light’s felt outlines
as anxiety sharpens   even as sweat softens
the same set of features.
Known paths crackle towards some untoward paradise.
Buildings staying switched on yet not the destination
yellow   carries day unhurried nonetheless   inscapes
solar prolongation.
Dusken stone through inwardness knows itself awkward
as if larger   not yet spacious.
Nightfall conjures up its bluish straits   less than generous.
Refoliation murmurs all in all creating
two true weathers
one for fall watch one for storm alert.

•

Shield-Shaped

To bring a leaf of darkness
To bring a dusken leaf
The game how not to say it
Becoming not enough

Its back is ridged ensilvered
Its back is channelled code
For how it lived by moisture
And trembles with your blood

To hand it is to tear it
To hand one leaf is still
To scroll an ardent garden
Into your hand, I feel —

•••

The Caribbean Review of Books, November 2008

Vahni Capildeo was born in Trinidad. She went to England in 1991, and completed a DPhil in Old Norse at Oxford in 2000. Her poetry includes No Traveller Returns (2003) and Person Animal Figure (2005).