I.
Sunlight slithers, insinuates itself,
amid preening palms.
Likewise, I goad my serpent
to rifle lady’s “bird’s nest”:
I don’t trifle.
When the moment
comes imminent—
of our monumental crisis,
our maximum crisis—
scissoring her suave silks,
or ripping the bed’s linen,
we know Tumult—the heart’s lusts—
desires as prejudicial as tears:
We fall sedate,
yes, not sated.
II.
As Lady Jane arrived—
side-saddle sidlin along her horse—
she’ll leave on her ever ready horse,
rearin round to Sir Roach,
I mean, Ol Massa.
But our politics is a nullity:
To glut and feast is truest Happiness—
Ain’t it?—
till worms glut and feast on us.
Hubby glances at me,
spots only a coal-coloured crow.
But his lady eyes “a majestic black bull”—
and she plays Europa,
beguiled in grass or surf.
To her, I’m renowned and welcome Gold Coast;
to me, her complexion is gaudy, fancy.
I welcome her cholic jollity;
her cold authority that I melt
(even if blood contaminates our rum).
III.
Lady Jane mirrors white wax flaming.
To spraggle and spread-eagle that wanton,
to pump her well
and plump up her belly,
mandates “manhandling.”
(How else can I avenge Mr. Roach’s
backside pollution of black maids,
his defiling of their nether hole?)
IV.
Now, my Lady’s extravagant, desiring
what is criminal.
I have her, take her, again,
clamp myself to damp limbs,
stoop her down in a stupor.
Ungovernable, inexorable,
comes swamping perspiration.
We go to bed as satyr and siren,
stage Adam and Eve
as master-and-slave.
Here’s how I make right
a heaven of injustice—
as in Sophocles.
Yep. Here’s my Dismay:
I see her husband spreading my sisters’ haunches.
V.
(I wish I were Massa’s son—
to add Incest
to Adultery and Treason.
Why? I recognize our true world:
Black-clad priests comfort black-clad widows
until all the blackness dissolves in shambles,
and they fall, white upon white.)
VI.
Out of the sauna of a salon,
after a luncheon of slave victuals—
pork, jokes, guffaws, rum—
Lady must be frisked once more,
and so she comes—
draped in light, wrapped in silk—
this pauper’s monarch,
to poise my truncheon
at her sea-like trench,
several tightly pinching inches,
until her copious opening
glugs gleaming spittle.
Obscenely, I giggle at my “bride,”
all her pictorial charms
splayed, displayed, and as available
as an empty wheelbarrow.
My Lady’s tra-la-la voice—
as haughty as the sun—
suits this milk-sprinkled quean,
so happy to stand my “black tulip.”
VII.
Now comes dusk,
the colour of lemon peel.
Soon, night darkens oceans,
turns the air black.
After one last sugared orgy,
my “horsepower” overpowering again her scruples,
what if she—literally—lost her head?
[Cable Beach (Bahamas) 26 & 27 mai mmxii]
* Pace Naipaul.
