Oracabessa

Lorna Goodison

• Publisher: Carcanet Poetry
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781847772428
• eBook ISBN: 9781847775030
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Oracabessa is a book of risky journeys, mappings and re-mappings, as the poet navigates place, history and imagination. Goodison travels to Spain and Portugal, to Canada ( Winter has landed') and back to the Hope Gardens of her childhood in Jamaica; even to the Old Testament world of Ruth and Hagar. Throughout her journeys she hymns the artists who inspire her: El Greco, John Donne, Billie Holiday, Miles Marley Mozart. At the end of travel, she is, as she says, Still on the road to Heartease.

Bye Boonoonoonoos

Bye Boonoonoonoos

Bye to the bird

of the most accurate

shade of chartreuse

which used to trill from a crossbeam

in the kitchen; kiss,

blow a kiss to that one

arthritic rose bush

mixture of rose madder, salmon pink

and maroon that

would extend a single

bloom as welcome

back to your boy, his best friend of a dog

and the hushabye of the river.

Before now you could not let

yourself record its teardown,

and your son asking mother why? why can’t we

just go home? But

those were those days

thank love; love prevailed,

cottage kept up by ivy, hemmed round by bush,

cedar leaf fall

and euphorbia, foreshadow

of actual ice and snow.

Bye Boonoonoonoos cottage of poems shook down.

One in a Long Line

Substance of things hoped for

no amount of if at first and try try

and try again could obtain.

Pulled up stakes without even a

“Go and good go with you

and take this heel of hardough

bread for the journey, accept tot

of whiterum and sop it spirit

skullcap against mole cold.”

Went anyway. Became one in

a long line of alien gleaners

who bear the icon of Mary

taking the boy to Egypt for safety.

Called out to Hagar how you too

were mother of a boychild

and you were both in want of a well.

Applied to Khadija wife of the prophet

for a job in the buy and sell business.

Held always before you examples

of sojourning women going far

for substance of things hoped for

Our Blessed Country Lady

From my brown cup freckled

with white dots

I’d sip mint or fevergrass tea

fresh or sweetened with

spoonful of logwood honey

and I’d watch for our Blessed Country Lady.

She who carried a load

on her head, usually a pile

of the island’s crosses

she’d elected to bear

for the ones who could not

manage them themselves.

No matter how my own day

had been, whether or not

a poem came or a painting

or a job to pay the rent,

I’d greet her as she descended

the side of the mountain;

shifting those burdens slow so

dark did not fall all at once,

she’d hail me back, say

“Thanks for the greeting;

I would love to come in

and see what you do today

but I am on haste; for I

have to take this dirty bundle

down to the river and wash

it out to sea; that way

when m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• To Make Various Sorts of Black
• Praise to the Limping Angel
• Hope Gardens
• In the Blue Boarding House
• Bye Boonoonoonoos
• Soon It Is Going To Rain Milk
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Also by Lorna Goodison from Carcanet Press
• Copyright