THEN CAME THE WHITE SISTERS
AFTER DEREK WALCOTT

Then came the white sisters
Those who’d flout the perils of Sea
They came, shrouded in veils,
content to live as sacrificial lambs
passionate only in their desire
to save heathen race that
dwelled there on the shore.

The Sisters must have mused upon
finger of their God in sea and sky
not unlike their own. In time
calls of gulls and doves would thrill;
hills echo psalms of praise,
palms whistle hymns with wind.

The Sisters, sure that God exists here too
in everything, but the people
whom they must teach, mold them—
dress them in new tongues,
new names for their race,
their kin, creator.

And the sisters remained.

PIGEONS IN THE SQUARE

Were there always pigeons in the former Pall Mall Square,
doing their quickstep dance through the soggy grass
early in the morning, before the sun even steeps the sky?

When did they come, echoing their undulating hum,
undaunted by early morning wind and rain? I had heard
of those in the other Pall Mall Square, tamed by gifts of food

that passers-by share. (Doves don’t sow, nor toil; yet they eat.)
But not here upon this square with its borrowed English name.
Boys then would have hunted them the way they stoned down

ground-doves in the hills, roasted, ate them— not so much for food,
but as some retro tribal ritual to sample the conquered. Pigeons would
have made easier catch had they been there upon Pall Mall Square.

I’d like to think if they were present long ago, they’d cock their heads
to meet doleful eyes of defeated Africans sold at slave markets here.
Mournful mutterings filled trees, floated on wind. Through leaves,

whispers brought familiar choruses from Home, ballads from seas,
with some faint desperate hope that the worst had surely passed;
new ways to build upon this strange land, carve new drums here.

Perhaps, that’s when the pigeons left, following donkey carts
to estates yards; they stayed there, singing from banyan trees
tales of unfolding woes. Wings clipped, some cooed in cages.

But now they have returned to Independence Square—
now christened with new name, a fresh brand of freedom.
Their murmurings transformed to praise ululations in trees.

Heather Archibald has been writing poetry from her youth. She has taught English in various CUNY colleges for more than twenty years. Her poetry collection Home-Home was published in 2016. She has been a Callaloo fellow in poetry (2016) and received the BRIO award for fiction in 2018. Her short story, “Sea-Stones for Angeline: a Fairy Tale” is being published in The Caribbean Writer (USVI) this summer. Heather is currently curating the poetry salon, Open Expression in Harlem.