dharbigt

Chaguaramas used to be the site of a U.S. Military base — it is the safest harbor on the island. As such, it is now home to the most marinas and there are huge numbers of cruisers and sailors from everywhere in the world here stopping for haul-outs, cheap repairs and rest.

CHAGUARAMAS
by Pavel Chichikov

Thirty-eight years is a lifetime there —

The profligate mountains and the bay

Green as cats’ eyes, the spare

Red soil above the sleeve of the sea

At rest the ship, at rest the water, the palm frond —

Even here some win some pay

In the camp a pig and a swollen child spend

Into the camera lucida of memory

Africa was brought here, India begun -

To eat and cut the sugar weed

Men let go as fertilizing dung

Women as the slow dropped fertile seed

Drop them all in a lake of pitch

Let them be used as cover for the road

The bones of swollen children catch

Between the grinders — the brains and the head

That’s the truth — cannibals drink sweet coffee,

Cake bound with egg and blood,

There is no obscure mystery

About how the lucky ones are fed

Green island, bullocks blacker than shadows,

Trinidad of the stiff wind and the widows

Covered harbor of the Holy Trinity

Chaguaramas asleep in their lee

Some of the worst memories I have were made in Jupiter. But that’s not Jupiter’s fault.

I traveled U.S. 52 from Ohio to Virginia along the Big Sandy River through many of the river coal towns of West Virgina. Others may well find this road boring, but it was amazing to me to see how this hollows are dying and to reflect on the economy of West Virginia. Seeing these one-horse towns was an education in itself.

This is the valley where the Matewan massacre happened. This is the valley where the Hatfields and the McCoys had their infamous family feud.

The reason the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy is called “Tug” is because that’s what they called the boiled shoe leather that 1756 expeditioners were forced to eat when their rations ran out.

Not a fun place, but a more edifying drive than some interstate.