Pointing Forward To Jamaican Interlude By Karl Parboosingh

Let me show you the perimeter first Diamond with cool edges like water Upon the shroudless sunshine of thirst That is the constellation he was after Four well clad figures on the perimeter And a single soul back in the middle Women all tha their provisions straddle Big broad bankras holding ends and center Of the national pride of work, waiting On the morning bus to come, a new day Away from the green canefields looking In sweet wonder on history's fading May But what holds my eye with still wonder Is two women who never will surrender The dread weight upon their head, like A finger pointing at Christ on his pike. Explanation: a bankra is a large Jamaican market basket (b St Mary, 1923; d Kingston, 1975). Jamaican painter. He studied painting at the Art Students League, New York, at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico. He returned to Jamaica in 1953, where he quickly established himself as a major avant-garde figure, challenging the sedate homespun realism of Jamaican artists such as Albert Huie and David Pottinger with vivid Expressionistic canvases. Karl Parboosingh's "Jamaican Interlude, 1958" The work is aptly titled "Jamaican Interlude" since, in it we see that quiet pause between two acts, as five figures obviously wait at the roadside , maybe for a country bus to carry them to the weekly drama and hustle and bustle of Saturday market. The five figures comprise four females and a youth, all depicted in the same white garb. They are placed against the backdrop of the Jamaican landscape, a blue, cloud-filled sky, lush vegetation, the hint of a cane crop, in the stillness of glaring sunlight, waiting with their produce-laden bankras