Fascioners of Progress - Kendel Hippolyte

Because you do not heed the voices of Imagination,

neither the tongues of trees nor the voices of poets,

earth will erupt in a conspiracy of poetry and nature.

Earthquake and landslide will snap and grind to rubble

your Baal-high idols of concrete and metal.

Fire will shrivel the pre-fabricated palaces

swelling like boils on our inflamed land.

Wind will shatter the thin cocktail glass illusions of our progress

into glittering dust scattering

over the ruins of casinos and the high-rise cemeteries made low.

Sea gnashing at our degraded shoreline

will foam corrosive spume that will dissolve your headstones —

they will return to sand.

But the poet’s words will last.

You will hear them prophesying in the hurricane,

their warnings in the night-sea whispering towards your chambers.

It will be the poet’s words coming at you

in the thundering sermon of the landslide,

in the revenging wind swearing down through the valley,

the crackling of the sun gone wild.

And when the earth has had her say and retribution,

afterward, in the green time of healing,

there will be other words, given to other poets.

They will be precious stones with healing properties;

mixed with dirt, folded in leaves and used as poultices,

they will protect the children who recite them.

But these words now – are for you,

David-stones, found at the river of reflection

and gathered in a poem, ready.

Come, fascioners of progress, come.

You hold the steel cuffs of the law,

the silver coins of bribery, the gun.

But when you see a poet writing poems,

run.

---

Kendel Hippolyte (born 1952) St. Lucia

Source: LyricLine