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Sixty years later today Janet smolders in the Grenadian mind. “Janet”, the Hurricane, stands for fury and apocalyptic fire!
Curiously, the word “hurricane” is derived from Harucan, the name of a Carib “Indian” god who shot calamitous winds.
Once branching light startles the hair of the coconuts,
and on the villas’ asphalt roofs,
rain resonates like pebbles in a pan,
and only the skirts of surf
waltz round the abandoned bandstand,
and hear the telephone cables
hallooing like fingers tapped over an Indian’s mouth,
once the zinc roofs begin wrenching their nails
like freight uncrated with a crowbar,
we remember you as the possible
deity of the whistling marsh-canes,
we doubt that you were ever slain
by the steel Castilian lances
of a thousand horizons,
deity of the yellow-skinned ones
who thatched your temple with plantains.
Janet House were prefabricated houses supplied as relief for homeless victims of hurricane Janet.