Odors and Smells
A Pungent Tale of Woe & Joy
By: J.M. Robert Henriquez - May 14, 2015
Odors and Smells
Odors & smells from a life
Resurrected
Wafts of exotic perfumes scrambled raw
By the Caribbean breeze
Bring home memories
Of a pungent tale of woe & joy
I need to tell it
Convincingly …
My absence from the native land
Lingered long enough
Decades kept me away from
Old habitual patterns
Hanging out with boon old chums
Some I barely knew but remembered
Others I knew well but passed
From my recollection
Chagrined by those who vanished
Into the deleted bin
But I yearned to see them again
All the madness we engaged in
Friendly caustic banters
Evening strolls off the beaten path
—Far from our genteel crowd
Roosted comfortably on the hills—
Illicit tours of the squatter areas
Where poverty forged the harshest possible life
This forsaken place we feared & relished
Looked as if it were an exquisite hell
Brazing pyres … cooking fires … lamp fires
Turned the warm darkness of night
Into the brightness of daylight
Each of our distinctive noses
Overwhelmed by clouds of odors & smells
Wafting wantonly about us
Devil’s fog we called it
Pork grinds in hot burning oil
Fishes big & small had a similar fate
Tassot beef … Tassot goat
Conch ragout … Black boudin
A hearty fritaille with a piquant sauce …
Now dizzied and ravenous
We gorged ourselves
We surrendered our gastronomic spirit
To the telluric powers of that life force
An affirmation of this natural presence
Possessed by both the forces of good & evil
The pungent smells of squalor
The bold odors of rustic cooking
The crackling of wood fires
The deafening cackle of the multitude
Masses of humanity moving
Like broken waves gave me vertigo
For a moment I felt adrift and rudderless
Like a loose buoy in a turning sea
I felt their presence—the ancestors
The exquisite manifestation of a motherland
Her stern embrace we all felt …
All of it brought us close
To the particular sense of blackness
We shared that night
But to the rest of them
The downtrodden proletarian
We were outlanders