Some speak of prayer to calm the sea. Only
in the dire doldrums are there windless waves
where whole ships, becalmed, die of thirst. The sea
does not care for such prayer. It’s full of graves
of the drowned who didn’t seek to appease,
“One Whose Fury Lays Waste To Everything;”
whose arms, the huracán’s curving winds, seize
and rend. Her name, in Taino rock carvings,
is Guabancex. Let the landlubbers spin yarns
of some old gringo, “parting the waters.”
Any god who can’t quell a hurricane
is bunk, sez’ New Orleans. Mother of Storms,
Guabancex, I’ll ride out your rage. Daughters
that deign, let my prayer join this howling rain.
][][
Notes:
The people who lived in the Caribbean prior to contact, the Taíno, personified the hurricane as Guabancex (pronounced Gua Ban She) Wrathful Mother of Storms. The art that survives depicts her arms outstretched in a S-shape, the same pattern that the winds of these giant storms take.
