The Flowering Rock [Poem]

THE FLOWERING ROCK
By Eric Merton Roach (1915-1974)

In fierce hot noons
Neath homestead trees
Our village girls
Breastfeed their young
Whose cradle is a song,
And in our valley
The stream water croons
Cool rhythms among stones.

Our hearts break not
Though they are ever broken,
A froth of laughter
Tops our sea of sorrows,
our singing sighs like zephyrs
In night silence:
Our voices bear the tracery of tears,
The burden of their cadence.

Oh from gaunt rock
As white as sanctity
The lily blooms:
Essence of darkness is
Too pure for fragrance,
The distilled stone,
The still voice of the skeleton.

This is our symbol -
Beauty famous in the slum;
The hungry boy who
Tomorrow shall become
The country’s hero;
The black loam bears him,
He breeds recurrent
In our fertile womb.

Day breaks, my darling:
Night, cast with eldritch dreams
Shrinks from these shores,
Light flickers on horizons;
Our souls like sunflowers
Turn toward the dawning:
Our hope begins its orisons.

Source: Peepal Tree Press
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A Note From The Gull

Thank you, Eric Roach, for your loving gaze while you acknowledge the beauty that cracks the struggle, the struggle that is beauty that is our corner of this earth.

"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.

Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.

Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare