Thanks, Rameau

by Modeste Downes, from the poetry collection, Phases,
Winner of the M&C Main Prize for Literature

Though my feet do not speak the language
Of the steps and rhythms of your dance
My heart understands the lyrics of
The culture you unselfishly shared
The pieces of our past you upheld.

I have seen you as you are
Never as you deserve to be;
On makeshift thrones of borrowed lumber
on Independence Day in the park,
In naked country’s disused discotheques
Drenched with the scent of the smelly white stuff
Dispensed from demijohns below the counter.

I have stood in sacramental awe
Imbibing each stanza of fluid note
That flowed like magic from your vyolon’s lips;
You are an alphabet of mystique
Each time I have watched you play:
Hat askew, fingers walking the body
Of the thing you necked like a lover,
Your feet light, tap dancing on the spot.

Entouraged, as your menu often shows,
By gay and bouncy, dwietted chantwèls
That pause from homely chores or from sweating,
Futilely, in the sweet potato fields,
Chanting a desideratum;
And the fellow on the goat-skin tanbou
Fingers recalling the ancestral kraal
Fingers itching, too, to shift the ashen cigarette
Locked in his chimneyed mouth;
The others that dance and carousel
That bwiyé for La Woz or La Magéwit;
Captivating as they always are
It is you, always you who spice up
The enchanting Kwéyòl ambiance
That colours us different from our neighbours.
And so through you, a living legend
I send a prayer for missing comrades
Whose voice I still hear from the great beyond:
Roddy who loved ’mas and lived for the stage
And Eric the biggest voice in folk;
To the Queen of culture, unparalleled
To the cultured priest who raised Kwéyol high
To you and others yet unrewarded:
May you live, even though you die!

Now, play me that vyolon to a sigh!

About the Poet

Ranked in the top ten of St. Lucia’s all-time best poets, Modeste Downes has published three critically acclaimed collections of poetry—Phases (2005), Theatre of the Mind (2012), and A Lesson on Wings (2019). He was the winner of the 2004 George Odlum Award for Creative Artists; Phases, was the winner of the 2005 M&C Main Prize for literature; and Theatre of the Mind was the winner of the 2012 CDF Arts Award for poetry. The poet was born and raised in the Vieux Fort area and is among a small cohort of writers who are giving rise to a distinguished body of southern literature that is among the best of what the island has to offer.