The road at this hour, that late-night hour
of road spread wide with silence; that car,
careful and slow, lone sound of engine
quarreling with itself, smell
of gas, of oil, of toil where there used to be
cruise and pep and beep.
Each half-functioning part declaring itself
boasting its travails and travels
its brakes squinting, red and awake.
The fast cars doom past, their music changing
key in the shook wind. The road is meat
dangled before them. Fools.
Left behind, taking time, gathering momentum,
shuddering home. Parked, in the morning
the children pass and point and laugh
as they must. They call it brededeng. It sits there
in the changing light, poised like a proverb
they will learn too late.
~ Vladimir Lucien
Vladimir Lucien is a St. Lucian writer and critic, whose debut collection of poetry, ‘Sounding Ground’ (Peepal Tree Press, 2014) won the prestigious 2015 OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry and the overall Bocas Literary Prize. He is co-editor of Sent Lisi: Poems and Art of Saint Lucia (2014).