Woman on the Verandah, Reading

At the book-signing he spells out a name
and the novelist, practised at this art
writes a tribute to someone’s sister
managing for a moment to set her image fluttering
into interest. The woman, a good reader,
lived in this country and worked in its hospitals
and is back now to reclaim her island
of high-swaying palms and fresh colour.
He can imagine in this new recruit to his prose
someone who takes to the waves most days
and comes home lively as seawater.

And the brother recalls her on the verandah
of a new house. Inside is a painting on the wall
to make them uneasy; men linked together by a rope
round the neck, hands tied at the wrist; a country at war.
Replaying the joke against herself, the nurse
imagines these captives washed and dressed,
one tending the family, another doing something
not worth noting; then, perhaps much older
coming to rest where she used to work.

These men will not let her go. She sits there
still with the page unturned, her mind uninvaded
by the richness of prose that well-describes her.
Who knows if she’s conscious of the restless sea,
of chunks of her life that didn’t travel, of a big book
sent in lieu of a visit? There’s a lizard on the wall,
the cat wandering off; and a boy with a cutlass
in her sights, toying with the tall grass next-door.
There she sits, book in hand, like a portrait.

Aptly described by Gavin Ewart as ‘a writer of great intelligence and vitality who can command a very powerful wry political comment’, E.A. Markham was a leading light in British Caribbean writing. He was a poet, novelist and short story writer, essayist and anthologist. He completed this selection of poems from his previous books, together with an opening section of nearly fifty new poems, shortly before his death in Paris at Easter, 2008. It is a fine memorial to a fine poet.