Hurricane Hits England

 (mouseover red text for glosses)

  

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Listen  to Nichols read her poem

It took a hurricane, to bring her closer
To the landscape
Half the night she lay awake,
The howling ship of the wind
Its gathering rage,
Like some dark ancestral spectre,
Fearful and reassuring:

Talk to me Huracan
Talk to me Oya
Talk to meen Shango
And Hattie,
My sweeping, back-home cousin.

Tell me why you visit.
An English coast?
What is the meaning
Of old tongues
 Reaping havoc
In new places?
 

The blinding illumination,
Even as you short-
Circuit us
Into further darkness?

What is the meaning of trees
Falling heavy as whales
Their crusted roots
Their cratered graves?

 O why is my heart unchained?

Tropical Oya of the Weather,
I am aligning myself to you,
I am following the movement of your winds,
I am riding the mystery of your storm.

Ah, sweet mystery;
Come to break the frozen lake in me,
Shaking the foundations of the very trees within me,
That the earth is the earth is the earth.


dark ancestral spectre - a spectre is a ghost, so this might mean the ghosts of her own ancestors, or it might refer to the Voodoo spirits of her former, Caribbean culture..

Huracan - was the Mayan god of wind, storm and fire; he also created the Great Flood which destroyed mankind.   His name gives us the word: 'hurricane'.

Oya - was the Yoruba (Nigerian) goddess of wind, lightning and hurricanes; she also guarded the underworld of the dead.

Shango - was the Yoruba (Nigerian) 'sky father' - the god of thunder and lightning.  He carried the axe of justice, and was also the god of music.   He became the symbol of slave resistance in the West Indies.

old tongues - this is an image of the wind.   But it is also a reference to the Caribbean language (dialect), and to the message that the storm was 'speaking' to Grace Nichols.

Reaping havoc - This is a strange error, because the phrase is properly 'wreaking havoc' -- the word 'wreak' means 'to carry out', 'to do'.  

   To 'reap' is to cut down a crop, and Nichols may have used it as an image of the storm flattening the trees and knocking down buildings.

cratered graves - the crater caused by the root ball of an uprooted tree.   The huge body of the tree lies like a stranded whale.

the frozen lake in me - her attitude which was cold towards England, but which was changed by the storm.

Hattie - Hurricanes are named after girls.   As the hurricane season progresses, each hurricane is given a name with the next letter of the alphabet - 'Adele', 'Bettie' etc.   Hurricane Hattie was a Category 5 storm (the biggest there is) which crossed the Caribbean in October 1961, when Nichols was 11.   It killed nearly 300 people, and caused millions of pounds worth of damage.

O why is my heart unchained - a reference to her change of heart' towards England, but also comparing it to the joy that the West Indian slaves felt when they were freed from slavery.