[Suite of 5 Poems] 
1.
Unwritten histories of human hearts
Who knows one day the books will write themselves
in magic language soon transforming us
to image, symbol and the ultimate silence.
My hand grown weary on a truthful page
and stops at last in total resignation.
Shall it be told? I seek the quiet answer
To this first question which began it all!
2.
For thousands of miles the sky is all the same
Just like the sea or time or loneliness.
It was the heart that noticed all of this
When it computed distance into loss.
3.
The sky bends with the earth and earth with space
And those who navigate are full of hope:
But the compass that they need is far more kind
Than love’s magnetic north pole of desire.
4.
I will always be speaking with you. And if I falter,
and if I stop, I will still be speaking with you, in
words that are not uttered, are never uttered, never
made into the green sky, the earth, the
green, green love …
And I was bathing by the sea and there was a
gull, a white gull, a white gull, so far, so far …
I saw the weak wing flutter long before it did,
and the webbed foot dip, long before it did; and
the sudden wave, and the scarlet tinted foam of
a sunset burning like fire already god in flames.
5.
Wanting to write another poem for you
I searched the world for something beautiful
The green crown of a tree offered itself
Because its leaves were combed just like your hair.
The sea wind brushes and the light rains wash
And crystal jewels cling to every twig
While tender are the tears in lovers’ eyes
Sleep all those tender blossoms yet to bloom!
Outside my window, law unto itself
This tall green crown confirms an oath I swore
with mighty roots invisible in earth
and amongst seeds that war with God and die.
Martin Carter
(First published in Kyk-Over-Al 49/50, June 2000)
June was the beginning of Martin Carter. This great poet, who always saw beginnings in endings, was born on June 7, 1927, and as regards Guyanese and West Indian literature, the month belongs to him.
Ephemeral as it is, the month is gone, but the immortal poetry of Carter is celebrated as being among the most original outputs of the imagination in the Caribbean, and, like the love of ancestral metaphysical John Donne, “no season knows, nor clime”. As if to prove that claim, the poetry selected here might have been written in 1961, but is new to us, and speaks to us afresh, as if with a new voice. It is charged with a sense of mortality, but is metaphysical verse, as evergreen as its repeated references to pastoralist vegetation, sky, sea, landscape, and air.
