FROM OVERSEAS AND FARTHER Poem by Tsjêbbe Hettinga

A letter, a flight, a getting together again
Under the corrugated roof of our cottage, hidden
In the cool noon of an olive grove on an island
Amid the waves of an Aegean archipelago:
Eleven days of you, warm and ripe as the fruit you
Brought with you; and while your eyes dispel a man's darkest light,
The trace of urban haste around your mouth comes to rest
Like the hot chalky dust of the path that led you here, which
Keeps bumping into itself as the blue tractor from
The village by the sea winds its way back down to the shore.

After a red drink on the shady green altar of
An olive tree, the full sun beating down on an empty
Well, looking and being looked at by a woman and
A donkey, a bevy of turkeys babbling in broken
Japanese beside a two fifty cc Suzuki,
Discussing the island's two faces or laughing at how
The two women and a man manage on an ancient
Motorbike, we whiz down the winding road to the quiet
Bay with its shoulder-high waves, the wind more of a sigh
From a far-off storm, forever yesterday's storm, the sea.

And your dark gleaming face, wave after wave exposing
The white coral of your teeth to the coast, which silently
Stares back from beneath its green hunter's cap; there you stand,
Up to your ankles in the sea, where the shoreline sucks in
Its girth, a souvenir caught between two time-frozen
Waves in a beautifully scalloped bowl of blue oval glass,
With your tight white swimsuit rolled down to the darker O
Of your hips, your breasts unbelievably bare and your arms
Already surrendering themselves to the water's
Latest onslaught, you, a Caribbean Aphrodite.

Accosted as well as lured by the names of the ships
In the summer harbor that Hercules Seghers captured
With a few strokes of his pen all those eternally
Sailed away centuries ago - Zakynthos, Calini,
Castor / Pollux, Stardust, Aspropirgos - you stand there
In the September sun, the wind caressing your long white
Summer dress, hoping to carry you off, your flaunted
Figure a trophy in high heels, with your hands on your hips,
Poised atop a sea wall built to survive the harshest
Of winter storms, defying the fishermen and their nets.

Early in the evening, when twilight drifts like a shepherd
And his flock through ancient groves of supplication, when our
Simple cottage, with its corrugated roof, becomes
Even hotter than the stones of the well beside the dead
And silent chairs, when the bandits of the libido
Begin to implore the prison of the night, you pick up
A black hose and, naked to the waist, engage us and
The water (Black glass that makes your body even blacker)
In a water fight, so that while the icy spurts rinse
The sea salt from our shocked skins, we shriek in childish delight.

And then stoop-shouldered darkness, smelling of wood and sea,
Seals off the olive groves (assisted by the dogs growling
At their chains), unleashes the rats and fetches the moon
From the hold of a sunken ship, all the while listening
At the edge of a murmuring well to the muffled
Chitchat of the two women as they help each other dress
And the revealing bursts of smothered giggles that keep
Coming from our cottage, so that the thought of wood and sea
Adds an unexpected fragrance to the freshly coifed
Hair and exotic flowers that color this mute darkness.

Under the arbor, home to salamanders and ripe
Clusters of grapes that conjure up the Song of Songs before
Our weary eyes, in the ghostly shine of candlelight
That dances along an old wall scrawled with the Homeric
Handwriting of Kyrios Seismos, you stroll up and
Down in a white dancing gown donned for the occasion,
Yet your lips betray your longing for your own island,
Your Caribbean roots, and while your hands excitedly
Tell the story, your eyes burn like the nightly fire that
Lured long-ago ships from a wondrously strange continent.

Later on, you sail, buoyed by the swollen excitement
Of a dimly lit party for the local stags and bucks,
Butchers of goats and sheep, farmers from the villages
And nearby wanton hills, while dancing in the Spanish arms
Of a stranded sea captain (once in the clutches of
A Chilean viper's nest and now, with a peacock's pride,
Astonishing the poor villagers with two adders
On a string): into the night you sail, light as a feather,
Over oceans - oh bright stars - to suffer love's shipwreck,
Like a letter in a bottle washed up on Curaçao:

Oh Mother, it's as still as the grave, all around me
Water made of glass and mute fish with mouths, o, wide open
Beneath the sleeping coast of Koraalspecht, as still as
The crickets and the night they impregnated with their chirps
Before it gave birth to a low-slung dawn here in Fort
Nassau, enveloping me in early light, while the high
Wind seeks shelter with you in Santa Rosa, as still
As the sheaf of letters in your lap; and in the garden
A mango dances a transparent golden tango
With the trade wind, a proud northeasterly from overseas

And farther. All alone, like the bashful iguana
Sunning itself in the sharp heat of the afternoon
On a tall cactus (daily dreaming the rapid day
In two), alone with my heart among the sintebibu.
But I sing and swing through the night, the voice and belly
Of a seaport, breathe in the air of fish and sea, mournful
Blues and the legend of a white hand, a sailor's hand
On my expectant black shoulder, leaning into the wind
But as strong as the watapana, from the throbbing wait
Of a maidenly existence beneath a tamarind.

And so the pounding of the waves on the two islands
(Will the cork keep the spirit in the bottle?) courses through
My veins, slyly robs me of my thoughts and takes me back
To the sea, though I no longer know the source of the shrieks -
The children on the beach, the sea birds above the fish
Or the dolphins in the bay - until in the sand of
My dreams my eleven little darlings dance and sing:
‘Ken' ken' nos ke tuma ke tuma ke tuma, ken', ken' . . . '
In a circle in the twilight beneath a tall tree
By a well in a cloud above a ship in a bottle.