Mystery
Allusion to a song - "Ah, sweet mystery of life - at last I've found you" was a popular song many years ago.
Mystery can mean a religious truth divinely revealed, especially one beyond human reason. It can also mean a secret religious rite.
Mystery is the name given to Babylon the Great, in Revelations in the Bible. Babylon was the place of slavery for the children of Israel - Is this relevant or merely a coincidence?
The author of the poem, Grace Nichols, uses the hurricane to show the reader how she feels about her life. The hurricane is wild and out of control, stirring up memories that had been forgotten. Nichols tries to tell the reader that no matter how we try to control our environment nature always holds the power to make us stop and think about what matters in life.
The author then questions the hurricane that she feels is stirring up memories of her "back-home cousin" "Hattie". She remembers her childhood tongue and relates this to the hurricane "Reaping havoc In new places?" expressing her view that the hurricane causes damage and can’t be controlled so that even if she does not speak in her old tongue she can still think in it.
The author asks "Tell me why you visit An English coast?" referring to the environmental changes which have caused the hurricane to form on the English coast.
The writer suggests that hurricanes are people, referring to one of them as "Oya". She says "Talk to me Huracan" showing that they have met before, but the hurricane does not answer and this is a one-way conversation. This also goes some way to prove that she is not from England as she moves into non-standard English and returns to using her first language.
"What is the meaning of trees?" asks the author. "Falling like heavy whales" which is a simile to describe the weight of the trees as they fall and linking this to the way she feels, heavy in heart, to be away from her home. "Their crushed roots" - which are dead roots, because the hurricane has destroyed the tree, "Their cratered graves" which means that the trees have been buried, like her "old tongue".
This refers to nature destroying itself as it is so uncontrollable. This shows that no matter how scientific we may be, we can never fully control nature.
The author asks the question "O why is my heart unchained?" which seems to suggest that she longs to be home and her emotions for where she came from are very high.
Grace Nichols eventually begins to unravel the mystery saying "I am riding the mystery of your storm" showing that she is beginning to listen to what the hurricane is trying to tell her.
She talks about the "foundations of the very trees within me" meaning her roots with her homeland are in her thoughts, twisted around each other like the roots of the tree.
"...the frozen lake in me" shows the reader that her thoughts had been hidden from herself but nature had released these memories when the frozen lake was broken by the storm.
The author constantly talks about nature and its effects, such as the hurricane and "the blinding illuminations" which I think refers to both natural lightning and the illumination that the author has been exposed to so that she sees things much more clearly.
At the end of the poem she says "...the earth is the earth is the earth" using repetition to relate to the strength of nature and the fact that people cannot control nature and nature will prevail as people continue to live and then die but the earth will still be the earth.
