minutes of his Central Committee were captured by thenincoming 82nd Airborne Intelligence in 1983, we nownknow that this group, half-nihilist fanatics, half-South Bronxnstreet gang, spent 55 hours of their last week of officendebating the semantics of their rhetoric, all garbed in thenrevolting nuts-and-bolts jargon of the mystery. Bishop wasnkilled (going to his end with a jaw problem like Robespierre’s,ntoo) along with his pregnant mistress and sundrynministers. For this bloodbath Bernard Coard, his Jamaicannwife, and a dozen henchmen (some assuming lurid Moslemnmonikers) were sentenced to death by hanging, after trialnbefore a jury of their peers, on December 4, 1986. Theirnsentences are still under filibustering appeal, aided from thensidelines by the customary pack of liberal lawyers fromnwithout (Ramsey Clark^ Anthony Lord Gifford).nI doubt if any of Bishop’s New Jewel Movement evernread Marx, let alone French authors of the revolution. Fornwhen your revo is palpably a disaster, as in Cuba, you createnmen compelled publicly to admire it, like the Pointe Salinesnworkers imported from Oriente province to build an airstrip.nReality has no say in the matter; the whole rotten magic isncalled a science, which even Marx was bemused intonFires in the Bronxnby William BaernWithin the great cathedral’s stained-glass light,nthe young boy suddenly stirred at sermon’s end,naware, somewhere, this world was flamed with fire,n”And pray for Jozsef Mindszenty — and those now dead.’nAnd after Mass, he moved about the adults,nwho spoke of men and women, martyred and dying,nand told of hope and freedom callously crushednby deadly tanks burning the Budapest streets.nAnd that same night, the Bronx lit up in fire —nabove the elevated subway tracks —nand suddenly, the night was wild with noise,nand fire trucks and children filled the streets.nAnd as the empty buildings burned, I watchednthose furious flames that burst up through the night —nremembering murder in Eastern Europe, and then,nthose raging fires, eternal, that never consume.nthinking his theory at the end.nHere Bishop’s New Jewel attempt at bloody revolutionnran into the highly religious nature of a Windward Island.nThis has to be felt at first hand to be understood. Grenadiansnare ardent churchgoers (most, but by no means all, Catholic),nand church services and related happenings play anstrong social role in the community. Women sing hymns atnwork. Sunday radio in the region is completely religious,nuntil cricket in the afternoon. Within religion lay Camus’n”future” and the New Jewelers couldn’t crack it. The,nisland’s Bishop Charles was fulminated at for years, as a CIAnspy and so on, but he was not imprisoned, unlike the lucklessngroup who tried to start a newspaper and found themselvesnin lightless cells. For religion allows in the imagination,nwhereas Marxism encloses it.nSo there was great joy when men dropped from thosenbirds in the sky to rescue us. Maurice Bishop’s coup, likenthat of the Ortegas in Nicaragua, and that of Desi Boutersenin Suriname, took place, significantly enough, in the lastnyear of James Earl Carter’s presidency when, as one IrisnMurdoch character puts it, “it’s not only our destiny but ournduty to be powerless.” For once we weren’t. <^nnnJUNE 1989/27n