A Fire in My Head
Page 6
time to ascend.
Invocation Hour
THE ANGLE
poet
sees life
a certain way.
nature
angle
relationship
to reality.
the master makes
something
out of nothing.
no such
thing as
nothing.
all things
imbued
with infinite
mystery
of origin.
mind shapes
the immortal
power
the atomic
reality.
BASED ON A TRANSLATION
i wander to the house of the one i love
where the plum tree brushes the eaves.
dripping with blossom and with leaves
the dew lies in the white flowers,
lies there in the gentle hours.
i watch sparrows from the flower-cups drink.
singing of my love makes me think.
how do you go to your love’s house?
on the night-wind, with wings.
what calls you to your lover’s house?
everything fine that sings.
how many roads lead to your lover’s house?
more roads than sand.
which is the best road to your lover’s house?
all the roads in the land.
DIALLO’S TESTAMENT
Can you read the riddle of sense
In this portrait of me begun?
I am one on whom providence
Has worked its magic turn.
Behind me is a quivering story
Like a storm, or a stain.
As an African I have worn history
Round my neck like a chain.
I have sipped the language of death
I have shaped my canvas of earth.
I’ve crossed a sea of fires
And seen what not even empires
Nor great might can obscure.
Man is the sickness, God the cure.
THE ROHINGYAS
the hammer of
the army beats
down upon them
laws of the state
dispossess them
eagles that feed
on time’s liver
devour them whole
and icons of justice
abandon them
they are scattered
in their thousands
across borders
and boundaries
and no one speaks for them
no one weeps at the rape of them
the laws say they cannot
buy land in their own lands
they’re dispossessed
of citizenship in the place
where they are citizens.
they’re the image
of powerlessness in
our time, the image of
vulnerability
of the peaceful way
in a time when
force moves
the world
and a religion
of light
dealing
darkness
on the edge of the world
where the centre
howls in its hollowness
a race of human beings
are perishing.
the world it seems
is good at being deaf.
the planet screams
women are raped
men are crushed
and tyranny
bursts at the seams
of its map and great powers
are silent. freedom’s hand
bloody and broken
is compromised
by the feasting
on hearts in the towers.
it seems there are two worlds
in one pipelines
confer immunity
tanks and guns break
the flesh
in the other blood
runs fresh
skulls are broken
on the pavements of history.
nations preserve
their equanimity.
this silence is a mystery
can you watch a
man being flayed
alive in the open
wound of the street?
can you watch tanks
crush human feet?
and a religion
of peace
dealing
in agony?
this silence is a mystery.
BREATHING THE LIGHT
you died gently,
without fighting
what was murdering you.
and maybe that’s
why your death moved
us so deeply. maybe
at the end there your life
seemed a wasted
thing, with three jail
terms behind you,
as you went to
the shop to buy
something with a
twenty-dollar
counterfeit bill.
the store owner
called the cops on
you, for twenty dollars.
i dread to think
how he must feel,
that his call in effect
led to your death.
we make too big a deal
about death.
it comes
and it’s over.
it goes into the air,
into the earth.
it rarely changes life.
but all through that
last hour, as the
police manhandled you,
twisted your arm
behind your back,
forced you to the
ground, and one of
them, the weirdest
of them, stuck his
knee on your wind-
pipe and took no
notice as you
whispered something
sixteen times, the
two other officers
simply stood there,
witnesses to the law
killing the law,
while concerned citizens
attempt intervention,
without power.
you didn’t see all
that. maybe all you saw
were the final moments
of your leap, when
on the school team,
you were going to touch
the sky and touch
the world; your leap
back then, how full
of promise, full
of the power to help
a team win. life
afterwards was a long
fall into the abyss
of america, where
to be black is to make
an early pact
with death, not your
own death, but the death
that’s waiting for you in
the blackness of
america.
maybe you saw all that
or remembered you at
a friend’s wedding
wearing a white suit, tall
like the bridegroom of
aphrodite, tall for
a big destiny, that
eluded you,
year after year,
in the purple
light of the republic.
and all those roads,
all those failed prom-
ises brought you
here, with your neck
beneath the knee
of a policeman,
the breath of life
fading from you
like the fragrance
from the autumn roses.
you called your breath
sixteen times, like
a sad lover, while two
white women filmed
the grim catastrophe
/>
of injustice that bloomed
there in lincoln’s
graveyard, the whole
broken earth of
america.
you didn’t fight
you simply faded as
your breath drifted
away beneath
the knee of justice.
you hadn’t been charged
you hadn’t been tried
you hadn’t been found guilty.
you had not been sentenced
and yet you were
being crushed to
death, while
the whole
world watched.
maybe it’s because you
did not fight, did
not struggle, because you
knew that to resist was
to invite death
from the law. you
learned not to struggle, not
to curse, not to protest,
not to fight back, only
how to die like flotsam
on a receding tide.
it was a kind of love,
your dying. a kind of
gentleness. There’s
no end to the insult
we suffer. when
did it really begin?
but it was that
way you let your
breath go, let it
go sixteen times,
watching it, eyes
slowly dimming,
maybe it was
your doing nothing but
let the heart of
america reveal
itself that was
the greatest way
of speaking, the
greater way of
dying, that brings
down the whole dead
house of race, that
died long ago
in white power,
in black silence,
died but did not
know it, because
of all the guns,
the law, the whole
invisible, inviolate
matrix of sustenance.
but hatred dies
slowly, dies a long time
and maybe will never
die truly as long as
eyes see fear where
heart sees flowers.
what did i ever do
to be hated by you?
and so your death
passed into the
force of history,
because it awakened
the silences
the pain
the injustices that
have been stored up
for four hundred
colourless years.
you died into silence
but the big world
rose up in speech.
there’s no poetry
of change greater
than when the world
sees at last that
it can be free
free to breathe the light that
keeps the republic alive.
INVOCATION FOR THE SHRINE 4
revelations come fast
with harvests of spirits.
for the world is not as it seems.
free yourselves from the illusion of limits.
here are the miracles unseen
time turning the limits of the past
into wise new freedom. redream
chains into fires that last.
saint time speaks from the shrine
of the hours; speaks about the powers
of the blacks who are free and can dream
free to weave power from flowers.
bring a clear dream for the world
you who walk this way. bring your light.
bring your wisdom, your fire, your hope.
bring a new courage, a new fight.
LINES TOWARDS A LOVE POEM
a voice in the flower.
and i am missing you.
on the edge of anguish.
hey, light-thrower,
i’m throwing love your way.
pure form
and luminous spirit,
beyond the body you
distil pleasures.
kissing you stops
time and the mind.
i carry you in me
like a poem unread,
a classic song,
or that full moon.
i am craving your gaze.
just a long kiss
without breathing.
so be patient.
let love and time
do their mysterious work.
i woke with a new clarity.
we earn what life will give
us, earn it with courage,
love and wisdom.
i’m sending you my tears
to open your way.
sow your talent
reap your genius.
GRENFELL TOWER, JUNE 2017
It was like a burnt matchbox in the sky.
It was black and long and burnt in the sky.
You saw it through flowering stumps of trees.
You saw it beyond the ochre spire of the church.
You saw it in the tears of those who survived.
You saw it through the rage of those who survived.
You saw it past the posters of those who burnt to ashes.
You saw it past the posters of those who jumped to their deaths.
You saw it through TV images of flames through windows
Running up the aluminium cladding
You saw it in print images of flames bursting out from the roof.
You heard it in voices loud in the streets.
You heard it in cries in the air howling for justice.
You heard it in pubs streets basements dives.
You heard it in wailing of women and silent screams
Of orphans wandering the streets
You saw it in your baby who couldn’t sleep at night
Spooked by ghosts that wander the area still trying
To escape fires that came at them black and choking.
You saw it in dreams of the dead who asked if living
Has no meaning being poor in a land
Where the poor die in flames without warning.
But when you saw it with your eyes it seemed what the eyes
Saw didn’t make sense can’t make sense won’t make sense.
You saw it there in the sky, tall and black and burnt.
You counted the windows, counted the floors
And saw the sickly yellow of half-burnt cladding
And what you saw could only be seen in nightmare.
Like a warzone in a fashionable borough.
A warzone planted here in the city.
To see with the eyes that which one only sees
In nightmares turns the day to night, turns the world upside down.
Those who were living now are dead
Those who were breathing are from the living earth fled.
If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell Tower.
See the tower, and let a world-changing dream flower.
Residents of the area call it the crematorium.
It has revealed the undercurrents of our age.
The poor who thought voting for the rich would save them.
The poor who believed all that the papers said.
The poor who listened with their fears.
The poor who live in their rooms and dream for their kids.
The poor are you and I, you in your garden of flowers,
In your house of books, who gaze from afar
At a destiny that draws near with another name.
Sometimes it takes an image to wake a nation
From its secret shame. And here it is every name
Of someone burnt to death, on the stairs or in their room,
Who had no idea what they died for, or how they were betrayed.
They did not die
when they died; their deaths happened long
Before. Happened in the minds of people who never saw
Them. It happened in the profit margins. Happened
In the laws. They died because money could be saved and made.
Those who are living now are dead
Those who were breathing are from the living earth fled.
If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell Tower
See the tower, and let a world-changing dream flower.
They called the tower ugly; dubbed it an eyesore.
All around the beautiful people in their beautiful houses
Didn’t want the ugly tower to ruin their house prices.
Ten million was spent to encase the tower in cladding.
Had it ever been tested before except upon this eyesore,
Had it ever been tested for fire, been tried in a blaze?
But it made the tower look pretty, yes it made the tower look pretty.
But in twenty-four storeys, not a single sprinkler.
In twenty-four storeys not a single alarm that worked.
Twenty-four storeys not a single fire escape,
Only a dank stairwell designed in hell, waiting
For an inferno. That’s the story of our times.
Make it pretty on the outside, a death trap
On the inside. Make the hollow sound nice, make
The empty look good. That’s all they will see,
How it looks, how it sounds, not how it really is, unseen.
But if you really look you can see it, if you really listen
You can hear it. Got to look beneath the cladding.
There’s cladding everywhere. Political cladding,
Economic cladding, intellectual cladding – things that look good
But have no centre, have no heart, only moral padding.
They say the words but the words are hollow.
They make the gestures, and the gestures are shallow.
Their bodies come to the burnt tower, but their souls don’t follow.
Those who were living are now dead.
Those who were breathing are from the living earth fled.
If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell Tower.
See the tower, and let a world-changing deed flower.
The voices here must speak for the dead.
Speak for the dead. Speak for the dead.
See their pictures line the walls. Poverty is its own
Colour, its own race. They were Muslim and Christian,
Black and white and colours in between. They were young
And old, beautiful and middle-aged. There were girls
In their best dresses, hearts open to the future.
There was an old man with his grandchildren;
There was Kadija, a young artist,
There was Amaya Tuccu, three years old,
Burnt to ashes before she could see the lies of the world.
There are names who were living beings who dreamt
Of fame or contentment, education or love
Who are now ashes in a burnt-out shell of cynicism.