Valentine


By Vahni Capildeo

“In this year was the great mortality
of birds,” they noted in the chronicle.
If all kinds of winged things fell from the sky,
would quietness be more remarkable
for happening by flashes? Just today,
today you are, are beautiful. Don’t wish
for more: to look like this again: why choose
to be some history? Can you fix this list:
what influences and what can be used?
Different as kissing is from being kissed.

•••

The Caribbean Review of Books, February 2006

Vahni Capildeo was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad. She went to England in 1991, where she studied Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse at Oxford University. Her first book of poems, No Traveller Returns, was published in 2003; her chapbook Person Animal Figure appeared in April 2005.