Ma Kilman's Bar

I cannot see the island's geography as clearly as I can Ma Kilman's bar: NO PAIN CAFÉ ALL WELCOME, with its wrinkled paint, bead curtain and neon sign endorsing Coco-Cola. Blind Monsieur Seven Seas sitting on a crate outside speaking in old African babble to his sharp-eared dog; shifting as the day ages his box to the shade. Philoctete, a wounded fisherman with foam-white hair, in the rumshop window staring out to sea, periodically anointing his itching, tingling shin with ice or Vaseline.

Picture credit: West Indies Divers, 1899, Winslow Homer (source: WikiArt).

See Omeros by Derek Walcott. 

Written June 2022.