Death in Grenada

                       -- from a street corner in
                          Castries, St. Lucia, Oct. 20, 1983

Today everything stopped.
The ground thumped
followed by a hard knot
on every street corner.

We crowded around our radios
for news of blood
unsettled confusion,
uncertain downfall
a touch
of every command being tested.

Man creates vacuums in paradise.
He divides all the trees
into splinters
and lets the fruit rot.

And death filled Grenada,
red scare,
on the day we remembered
the Birth of the Primal Point
in rarefied air
in prayer for the living
and for the dead.

                -- C.S. Cholas