The poem’s critique of the Europeans’ impact on the New World is to a large extent effected through a play between [images of] dark/ness and light and a reversal of the meanings usually associated with each of these terms. The title of the poem itself is part of this play and critique. Voicing the consciousness of indigenous Americans through the ages, the poetic persona is now “seeing the light”—as in arriving at an understanding of the true meaning and ramifications of the outcomes of the Europeans’ arrival in the New World—and brings the reader into this understanding. As such, the poetic persona rejects the claims of dominant versions of History, which present the Europeans as the bringers of light—those who edified and instructed through conquista, evangelismo, and civilización and illuminated the darkness of paganism/ignorance and traditionalism/primitivism/prmitiveness in which the indigenous peoples lived. Instead, the speaker offers another interpretation of the outcome of the contact between indigenous Americans and the European newcomers: that the spiritual beliefs and cultural practices of indigenous peoples were not backward or primitive. Rather, they encapsulated a worldview that emphasized harmony and balance between humans and the natural world and mutual recognition and regard between different groups of people. Such a worldview, although still under seize by dominant political and cultural forces, provides a model for the kind of environmental sustainability and cross-cultural respect which are still elusive ideals in many twenty-first century societies.

In lines 15-16, the speaker affirms, “Before you came, it was dark in our garden, / that’s true.” But in this case dark/ness carries positive connotations of protection, respect, and reverence for as well as balance between humans, animals, and the natural world. For example, where the Europeans saw only a dense and unruly jungle requiring the force of human hands to cut, tame and order it (or, in their parlance, bring in “light”), the Indigenous peoples respected the role that canopies and understories play in maintaining ecological balance. Ironically, then, it is the self-professed bringers of light whose worldview and unsustainable practices have over time resulted in environmental disasters and ecosystem imbalances such as drought (“there are not enough trees to pull down/ the rain” [lines 7-8]), atmospheric contamination (“smoke obscures the sun for/ months now” [lines 6-7]), and the decimation of wild life (“The animals are gone too; without hunters/ they’re no longer game” [lines 8-9]. The positive connotations of dark/ness are also carried over into lines 27-28: “By the stars and planets across/ the green (and dark) terrain, we navigated.” Here, the speaker acknowledges the Indigenous people’s use of the science of astronomy in their everyday lives. This is a powerful rebuttal of claims that the Others the European explorers encountered in their travels were ignorant of science. When Columbus made his first voyage to the Americas, celestial navigation was just being developed in Europe although Indigenous peoples had long used their knowledge of astronomy to aid them in land and sea travel.

At the close of the second stanza, the speaker further suggests that the ecological harmony prized by Indigenous cultures was/is an important expression of their spiritual worldview. In lines 33-36, the speaker argues that if the Europeans had not destroyed the New World environment they encountered through force and exploitation, a natural—and integral—balance between Heaven and Earth would have been maintained. A similar spiritual worldview is espoused in the collection’s opening poem "Gourd" where that poetic persona warns against the “chaos” that “would ensue/ if heaven and earth parted” (lines 19-20). The image of the inverted cluster of stars (the Pleiades) created by pinpricks of light filtering through the leaves onto an unscarred landscape conveys the idea that Heaven and Earth are mirror images of each other. One is necessary to the other, and the speaker seems to suggest that their mutual and unbroken reflection not only sustains existence itself but also allows the true light of life to shine through.  

Assessed through this worldview, the Europeans are recast as bringers of darkness in the third stanza: “our world/ under your sway fell into the true darkness/ of Night, fell apart from lack of regulation” (lines 40-42). This is a powerfully ironic reversal given that, in its role as the dominant religion in the Western sphere, Christianity is often touted as the one true faith system that brings Light to a world in darkness. The Indigenous speaker questions the actions of the Europeans who used the pretext of a civilizing mission and the notion of “saving” the peoples through they encountered by converting them to Christianity to cover over their true intent: that is, the acquisition of wealth through conquest. As such, the speaker sees little or no distinction between Conquista, Evangelismo, and Civilizacíon. In motive as well as outcome, all three are closely related—even interchangeable. Together, they structured the nature of the contact between European and Indigenous peoples from the Age of Exploration onward and informed ideas about the “native” Other who, as Arjun Appadurai argues, does not exist but is simply a construction of the “anthropological imagination” (39). In the anthropological imagination, the “native/ “native culture” is typically/usually presented as different from a familiar norm, with strange beliefs and practices that require investigating and explaining before they can make sense to the outside observer. However, in a telling shift in perspective, it is the Europeans and European culture that become the subject of inquiry halfway through the final stanza. To the outside (Indigenous) eye, the conquerors’ religion appears to be not only contradictory—“Why did those/ who speak of Light wear black, the colour/ of mourning?” (lines 49-51)—but violently so: “Why on a dead tree did they nail the bringer/ of light, one Cristo, torture and kill him/ then ask us to come, bow down and worship him?” (lines 52-54). Having “waited in vain” for the “true light” that the Europeans said their “one God” would bring, the speaker adopts a satirical stance/tone in the poem’s closing lines. The folly of the Europeans’ actions/position is exposed as the speaker links the “dead tree” of the crucifix to the forestry/landscape and environmental damage, wildlife extinction, and human genocide chronicled throughout the poem. These are the “strange things” (line 55) brought about by the Europeans’ arrival in the New World. As well, the ironic interplay between “death” and “life, “illuminate” and “cover over” cements the speaker’s indictment of the impact the Europeans have had on the Indigenous world.

In Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays, Édouard Glissant contends that New World Caribbean history is marked by “ruptures” and “brutal dislocation,” which forestalled the possibility of a regional “historical consciousness [being] deposited gradually and continuously like sediment.” Instead, that historical consciousness “came together in the context of shock, contraction, painful negation, and explosive forces,” causing disruption to/in the continuum of memory and meaning making (61-62). The resultant/resulting fragmentation of self and story has made attempts at re/mem/ber/ing difficult—although not impossible. It is precisely such re/mem/ber/ing that Senior facilitates in “Seeing the Light.” Mindful of the written records of History which have rendered Indigenous peoples as prehistorical/outside of history, Senior creates a poetic persona whose first-hand witness account becomes an important act of Indigenous historicization. This spoken, oral history calls into question the status and veracity of the written History while the speaker’s location across multiple temporalities merges past, present, and future in a way that knits back together the collective historical consciousness of Indigenous [Caribbean] peoples.

Notes

¹ The virgule(s) in this word denote/s the manner in which Senior has her poetic persona reassemble / put back together pieces of the past, which is a “re/mem/ber/ing” of the psycho-social and physical body  of a people and  culture dis/mem/ber/ed by conquest and colonization.

Works Cited

Appadurai, Arjun.  “Putting Hierarchy in its Place.” Cultural Anthropology 3.1 (Feb. 1988):  36-49. Print.

Glissant, Édouard.  Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays. Trans. Michael Dash. Charlottesville:  Caraf Books/University Press of Virginia, 1992. Print. 

Wunker, Erin.  ‘Speaking, Pausing for Breath, and Gardening.” Canadian Literature 192 (Spring 2007):  167-169. Print.