Havana, Yasmine arrived one early evening,
the stem of an orange dress,
a duffle bag, limp, with no possessions
the sea assaulted the city walls,
the air,
the birds assaulted the sea
she's not coastal,
more used to the interiors of northern cities,
not even their ancillary, tranquil green-black lakes
though nothing was ever tranquil about her,
being there out of her elemental America
unsettles her, untethers her
being alive, being human, its monotony
discomfited her anyway, the opaque nowness,
the awareness, at its primal core, of nothing
a temporary ache of safety,
leafed her back like unfurling fiddleheads,
she glimpsed below the obdurate seduction of Atlantic
and island shore,
when they landed, a contradiction,
a peppery drizzle, an afternoon's soft sun
the oiled air of Havana pushed its way onto the airplane,
leavened, domestic,
the Tupelov cabin like an oven darkening bread
Copyright © 2010 by Dionne Brand, Ossuaries, McClelland & Stewart
