After the carnivalAuthor(s): DENNIS SCOTTSource: Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 1/2, The 60th Anniversary Edition: Literature andIdeas (March - June, 2008), p. 174Published by: University of the West Indies and Caribbean QuarterlyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40655175 .

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174

After the carnival that frame twisted. Tinsel shivered in the eye's corner the mouth was turned down, stopped in its grimace, there were fragments of crystal like ice under the forehead, or sweat finally dry. The air was loose again, like an old drum.

That was the real silence. Not the doors closing nor the death curled down every street like streamers nor the singer's drunk breath

But the mask was terrible to comprehend, bent, buckled, and the treason of its laughter inflexible and sequinned after all. The armature betrayed its dance

trapped in a flat relief: the face was uninhabited.

Only its frozen ironies lent

anger to the treason of my grief.

DENNIS SCOTT

Vol.18, No.l, March, 1972

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