I AM GLAD that I did not go to Brumley. I remember in third form learning a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley called Ode to the West Wind. I am inclined to liken this poem to the state of Barbados with respect to the CLICO issue. Don’t you think that “ghost from an enchanter fleeing” applies to those who are now seeking absolution – like creatures fleeing from a sinking ship?
The famous line “if winter comes, could spring be far behind?” – does this mean that if the judicial managers do due diligence, something catastrophic will happen wherever “the chips fall”, to quote the relevant parlance? The line “thou in whose stream the steep sky’s commotion loose clouds like earth decaying leaves shed” reminds you of what we are told are the unauthorized selling of annuity policies.
The “locks of the approaching storm” after the “zenith height” (once enjoyed), now presage the “closing night will be dome of a vast sepulchre” – meaning a long time for people in jail or the sepulchre; but foretelling that somebody is going to die.
“The winged seeds where they lie cold and low, each like a corpse within the grave, until thine azure sister of the spring shall blow her clarions (people) ore the dreaming earth”; I interpret to mean that people had their investments safely tucked away but at low interest rates (within the grave). “Azure sister of the spring” are the relevant salesmen who ply the dream of high returns – the “clarions”. It turned out not to be a preserver but a destroyer.
Funny how poetry can teach you a lesson! Wordsworth says that the golden daffodils awaken beautiful memories that he said are the bliss of solitude; well, the poem by my friend Percy awakened no bliss – pure pain. The “Wild West Wind” (the current calamity) has brought “rain and lightning” “shocked from the tangled boughs of Heaven” (expected happiness for the future – equated to one’s expectation of enjoying milk and honey in the after life).
Now innocent people are suffering. People whose winter years are expecting to be cheered by copious returns may be staring at “dark wintry beds”.
“Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere” refers to the widespread wings of CLICO. They span the Eastern Caribbean, Barbados, Trinidad, Guyana, Belize, The Bahamas and even Florida and Switzerland, all of which territories are feeding off air; and we could easily substitute the Blue Caribbean Sea for the Mediterranean Sea.
“The palaces and towers besides a pumice isle” (Culpepper) refers to Sam Lord’s Castle and Villa Nova in St John, all now overgrown with “azure moss and flowers”.
The combatants are now saying “If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear” (asking for the chaliced cup to go away – like Macbeth in Shakespeare’s tragedy, imagining the dagger before him; or like Milton’s blind boy asking if he is to be held to the same standard despite no sight. Now people are seeing events no longer controllable as the “Wild West Wind” impedes their wandering over Heaven and on bended knees people wish to be lifted as a “wave, a leaf, a cloud”. They see the inevitable; for to them there is no way out. They “fall upon the thorns of life” – hopes rest with the forensic audit. They bleed for the “skied speed” is “tameless, swift and proud”.
Unlike Percy, I think that there is no “if” about winter coming, and people will have to skip spring.
You think that Richard is the only idiot?
