Hurricane Janet, September 22, 1955

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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.

 

Poet Derek Walcott acknowledges the Carib deity in a poem entitled “Huracan”.

walcott

 

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

Janet House were prefabricated houses supplied as relief for homeless victims of hurricane Janet.

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