Pelée: May 8, 1902

    With the smile of morning
    in her purse,
    the dark laughter of her
    cat napping
    in the crevice, half-alert,
    Martinique (angelique)
    on padded paws
    climbs from night.

    I saw her hair-brush
    the lava to warm the bay,
    crinkle little St. Pierre
    jammed into one
    parking lot, volcanic embrace.

    In the little museum
    - the holocaust cenotaph -
    Nature pared essentials to the bone,
    a cauldron of smoke
    peers from old photographs
    to cement (danse macabre)
    bric à brac ivy/stone and
    coffee beans wedded
    in grandeur
    fission-fusion-froideur
    resembling masses of bees,
    grotesqueries & beards
    upstaging even Miro & the distant surrealists;
    where reality masked vampire fiction to
    roll sulphuric heat toward belches of
    St. Pierre's prison.

    And Cygnet
    (his name close in French to "Swan"
    leg-irons)
    (subterranean chamberling peeking out),
    undaunted solitary survivor -
    the bars on his charnel house
    were the fingers of God
    pointing the way free.