In the bookshop
and in his kitchen
he seemed the same
warm presence, quietly sharing
data, recommending things
to read, acknowledging
so much that others did not
deem progressive.
His instinct to include
attracted cultural allies
whose revolutionary impulses
they themselves disclaimed
at first, before they understood.
NURSERY
Everyone suddenly burst out screaming
and hurling plastic building-blocks;
the room was a riot of colour.
Did that autistic child have duller
things in mind, hugging his little box
of bricks and quietly beaming?
CASE HISTORY, JAMAICA
In 19-something X was born
in Jubilee Hospital, howling, black.
In 19- (any date plus four)
X went out to school.
They showed him pretty pictures
of his Queen.
When he was seven, in elementary school,
he asked what naygas were.
In secondary school he knew.
He asked in History one day
where slaves came from.
‘Oh, Africa,’ the master said.
‘Get on with your work.’
Up at the university he didn’t find himself;
and, months before he finally dropped out,
would ramble round the campus late at night
and daub his blackness on the walls.
BRIEF
Your dark eye is a prism
to reflect
the new world in its glass?
Shatter that rass
and roam
the darker continent
inside.
CABAL
Dem beg him, beg him, till dem sick
an tired – him wouldn sign him name
to what de most a dem waan lick
de opposition with. Him seh, ‘Same
knife stick sheep stick goat,’ an walk
out of de room. De big-man bus
a funny laugh. Nobody never talk
to him like dat. Him seh, ‘Trust
me, eediot mus learn.’ So, first of all,
we kick de eediot out de group. An den
we start de rumour seh him bawl
fi mercy when we check de books again –
yuh never know him tief? Yes, man, tief
like puss, unless yuh watchin him! An now
dat him expose, pure grief
to get another job. Him shoulda bow!
Me scratch your back, you scratch mine;
but if yuh tun traitor yuh must pay.
Dyamn fool! De eediot bwoy was tryin
to block de road. We move him out de way.
POLITICIAN NIGHTMARE
I’m in a meeting
sorting out
an everlasting list
of supplicants
and suddenly
I’m flying
low
above the city
and a mob
is reaching up
trying to drag me down
AFRO-SAXON
I
Another friend arraigns me:
too detached, he says,
absurdly free
of all the ways of feeling
true blacks, as a rule,
now share: Be funky, brother,
or be cool!
Okay. Though blackness isn’t new
to me: ten, fifteen years ago
I didn’t need
a uniform, my skin would do:
but I am learning, brother;
I’ll succeed …
II
He never made it. Thoughtinspectors,
quivering at the sight
of an Afro-Saxon on the road
towards the border, caught
him sneaking into
Blackness, radioed:
Don’t let that nigger fool you, he is White!
THE HOUSE SLAVE
A drum thumps, faraway;
around the lamp my tribe of blood
are singing brothers home.
But soon that central fire will rage
too harsh for relics of the whip:
they’ll burn this building,
fire these books, this art.
And these are my rooms now:
my pallid masters fled,
fleeing the only home I knew.
I’ll stay another night,
sounding my tutored terror of the dark.
I AM THE MAN
I am the man that build his house on shit
I am the man that watch you bulldoze it
I am the man of no fixed address
Follow me now
I am the man that have no job
I am the man that have no vote
I am the man that have no voice
Hear me now
I am the man that have no name
I am the man that have no home
I am the man that have no hope
Nothing is mine
I am the man that file the knife
I am the man that make the bomb
I am the man that grab the gun
Study me now
FOR 1865
We hear you
bawling justice
justice
we want justice
echoing
a century
and a half
into the TV news
The killing time
has lingered
like a dump on fire
like the cries
of grieving
like the hegemonic
stench
of army
and police
destroying
in the name
of peace
and order
ADVISORY
They praise you for commitment,
your positive approach
to the whole heap o’ problems
people broach.
Have fun being chatted-up,
but don’t buy in-
to any sweet-mouth programme.
Do your own thing.
Remind them you’re committed
to the line
that saying what you feel
is fine,
positive or negative
or in-between.
Don’t let anybody
lock you in.
CATCH A NIGGER
At home with his creative curse
he lived inside; and (what was worse)
declined to share the public strain.
His beat was individual pain.
The censors grew more angry and more loud:
how dare he set himself outside the crowd?
‘The times are critical. You’re either for
or you’re against us. This is war!’
And then a man with an enormous head
assaulted him. The victim bled
outside, in open view. Perhaps the pack
would sniff his blood and classify it black?
‘Fee fi fo fum,
When you perform, our god is dumb;
Eeny meeny miney mo,
You’re a Nigger Minstrel Show!’
He stanched the public wound, and bled
inside again. His blood was red.
FOR CONSCIOUSNESS
Ol’ plantation wither,
factory close down,
brothers of de country
raisin’ Cain in town.
An’ now dem in de city
sweatin’ blood dem fin’
is jus’ like de same system
dem mean to lef’ behin’:
but agents of de owners-dem
is harder now to sight –
plenty busha doan ride horse
an’ some doan
t’ink dem white.
In de new plantation story
firs’ t’ing dat have to know
is who an’ who to tackle
when de call to battle blow.
TO AN EXPATRIATE FRIEND
Colour meant nothing. Anyone
who wanted help, had humour or was kind
was brother to you; categories of skin
were foreign; you were colour-blind.
And then the revolution. Black
and loud the horns of anger blew
against the long oppression; sufferers
cast off the precious values of the few.
New powers re-enslaved us all:
each person manacled in skin, in race.
You could not wear your paid-up dues;
the keen discriminators typed your face.
The future darkening, you thought it time
to say goodbye. It may be you were right.
It hurt to see you go; but, more,
it hurt to see you slowly going white.
TO THE UNKNOWN NON-COMBATANT
When the battle started
he was quick to duck.
He lay on his face in the open street
cursing his luck.
‘Come join us!’ (voices from the left).
‘Come help us in the fight!’
‘Be honest with yourself; you’re ours,’
said voices from the right.
Meanwhile the bullets overhead
were troubling him somewhat
and buildings burning either side
had made the middle hot.
He thought perhaps he’d better choose.
He crawled to join a side.
A bullet clapped him in the neck –
of course he died.
They left him face-down in the dust,
carcass going rotten.
Bullets whistled overhead.
He was forgotten.
A POET OF THE PEOPLE
The pressure of the public made it smart
to turn away from ‘self-indulgent Art’.
He found immediate applause inviting,
and gave himself wholeheartedly to writing
poems for the people, loud and clear.
When people didn’t seem to care
much whether he wrote well or not –
how was nothing, everything was what –
he changed his mind again. And so,
thinking to have another go
at ‘self-indulgent Art’, he turned
towards the woman he had spurned,
his ever-loving personal Muse,
believing she could not refuse
him. But she did. She left him there,
writing for the people, loud and clear.
NARCISSUS
They’re lying; lying, all of them:
he never loved his shadow.
He saw it was another self
and tried to wring its neck.
Not love but murder on his mind,
he grappled with the other man
inside the lucid stream.
Only the surface broke.
Unblinking eyes
came swimming back in view.
At last he knew
he never would
destroy that other self.
And knowing made him shrink.
He shrank into a yellow-bellied flower.
OMENS
last night
a dream of feasting
today at noon
a green limb broken
in the wind
GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH
The Great Majumboes
(to the noise of drums)
feign danger every show:
vivid above the safety nets
they swing.
The Mighty Marvo cracks the whip:
well-drugged tigers lumber into line.
Between the tigers and the acrobats
I do my act I
sit on chairs that aren’t there
I play for time
(between the tigers and the acrobats)
a dwarf
who owns no whip
and will not leave this ground.
BEHIND THE CURTAIN
Behind the curtain, when we knew
the audience hadn’t come,
the ugly mood of histrionic sorrow
was broken by an actor playing dumb
patrician: ‘Will the damn fools come tomorrow?’
LIVING NEAR THE ZOO
resentfully awake
inside our bungalows
we hear
the cinematic roar of lions
in their cages
FABLE
The grey beast, smiling,
stretched a claw
to draw the artist in;
red with rage
the artist turned and spat.
‘I cannot stand
the grey beast
with its coat and tie.
Leave me
to rear my roses
shape opinions
suffer books
paint pictures
love the people
choose true friends.’
The grey beast, placid, smiled.
The artist,
red with rage,
fired arrows
at the huge grey gut.
The grey beast, mocking, smiled.
And when the artist had the nerve
to turn and ask for help
the grey beast muttered sadly,
‘You despise me. Help yourself.’
SOMETIMES
‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘when it was hot as hell
we’d go and capture scorpions for laughs,
and dig a trench around a little circle
in which we dumped the heap of them,
and pour in kerosene and light a fire.
Was fun to watch the devils fight,
and burn to death in trying to escape.
Scorpions are such beasts.’
MEETING THE MAGE
Charming, malicious, brilliant,
you posed your aching heart upon your sleeve
(yet so discreetly), breathing warm
to those who loved your sunshine humour,
passionate contempt, your well-turned
praises, witty mimicry –
oh, you were quite a boy, without conceit.
Yet, though so often self-deflating,
you held court all day long. I loved it.
While I was there I loved it; but,
free from that bright ambience,
irony took hold.
SATIRIST
Satirical vision:
bloodshot eyes
darting derision,
laughing at lies.
When the eyes turn in
will the dry mind grin?
If the eyes talk true
will the heart laugh too?
If the eyes don’t lie
will the dry mind cry?
If the eyes go deep
will the cold heart weep?
DEATH AND THE MAIDEN
after Edvard Munch
Her partner is a skeleton.
Does the waltzing beauty know
that he will never let her go?
He’ll have her when the dance is done.
He’s put a bone between her legs.
Her fleshy body begs
for love, she holds him tight,
her gigolo, her slave tonight!
PRE-CARNIVAL PARTY
after Jules Romains
One evening in another town
– a little before Carnival –
a funny man with flies around
him crashed into a bar.
‘Beauty-queen an’ sagaboy,’ he said,
‘dey posin’, but dey ain’ fool me:
de one sure t’ing is all-yuh dead
dis time nex’ century:
‘yuh lookin’
vague an’ sad like when
yuh ain’ know what to-duh.
Look alive! Before ah sen’
De side fo’ yuh!’
Reminded of the loyal flies
buzzing round his face,
the people quickened into life –
jumped up and shook the place.
On what it was that made us jump,
injecting life into the fête,
the pundits waver or are dumb.
Was it the fear of flies or death?
A WORD
please to
burn the body
when i die
& scatter
ashes in the wind
so there is nothing
physical to focus on
when i am gone
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