An anthology of evocative Caribbean poetry
Death must not find us thinking that we die
Too soon, too soon
Our banner draped for you.
I would prefer
the banner in the wind.
Not bound so tightly
in a scarlet fold
not sodden sodden
with your people’s tears
but flashing on the pole
we bear aloft
down and beyond this dark, dark lane of rags.
You come in warships terrible with death I know your hands are red with Korean blood I know your finger trembles on a trigger And yet I curse you- Stranger khaki clad.
British soldier, man in khaki careful how you walk My dead ancestor Accabreh is groaning in his grave At night he wakes and watches with fire in his eyes Because you march upon his breast and stamp upon his heart.
Do not stare at me from your window, lady do not stare and wonder where I came from Born in this city was I, lady,
hearing the beetles at six o’clock
and the noisy cocks in the morning
when your hands rumple the bed sheet
and night is locked up the wardrobe.
The child ran into the sea but ran back from the waves, because the child did not know the sea on the horizon, is not the same sea ravishing the shore.
What every child wants is always in the distance; like the sea on the horizon.
And limbo stick is the silence in front of me limbo
limbo
limbo like me
limbo
limbo like me
long dark night is the silence in front of me
limbo
limbo like me
stick hit sound
and the ship like it ready
stick hit sound
and the dark still steady
limbo
limbo like me
England, autumn, dusk-so different from the quarter-hour at home when darkness drops:there’s no flamboyant fireball laughing a promise to return;only a muted, lingering farewell,and day has passed to evening.
When Granny died I stumbled in and out her place, remembering banana porridge, fumbling her dog-eared bible,faded bedspread,musty cushions, hugging memories of her love.
From the overflowing funeral this fingled programme is a talisman I carry everywhere. Love is with me still.
Dem use to seh
yu peel a orange
perfec
an yu get new clothes
But when mi father try
fi teach mi
slide de knife
up to de safeguard thumb
I move de weapon like
a saw inna mi han
an de dyamn rind
break
Dilapidated room,paint peeling.
Sufferers
on edge.
The chief invigilator
gives the word.
The fingered papers rustle.
Outside the centre-
part of my recall-
trees bend and stretch
and breathe.
(for Don D.)
Me one, way out in the crowd,
I blow the sounds, the pain,
but not a soul
would come inside my world
or tell me how it true.
I love a melancholy baby,
sweet, with fire in her belly;
and like a spite
the woman turn a whore.
Your mouth contorting in brief spite and hurt,your laughter metamorphosed into howls,your frame so recently relaxed now tight with three-year-old frustration, your bright eyes swimming tears, splashing your bare feet,you stand there angling for a moment’s hint of guilt or sorrow for the quick slap struck.
The ogre towers above you, that grim giant,empty of feeling, a colossal cruel,soon victim of the tale’s conclusion, dead at last. You hate him, you imagine chopping clean the tree he’s scrambling down or plotting deeper pits to trap him in.
You cannot understand, not yet,the hurt your easy tears can scald him with,nor guess the wavering hidden behind that mask.This fierce man longs to lift you, curb your sadness with piggy-back or bull-fight, anything,but dare not ruin the lessons you should learn.
You must not make a plaything of the rain.
The day my father died I could not cry;
My mother cried,
Not I.
His face on the pillow
In the dim light
Wrote mourning to me,
Black and white.
We saw him struggle,
Stiffen, relax;
The face fell empty,
Dead as wax.
I’d read of death
But never seen.
My father’s face, I swear,
Was not serene.
Topple that lie,
However appealing:
That face was absence
Of all feeling.
My mother’s tears were my tears,
Each sob shook me:
The pain of death is living,
The dead are free.
For me my father’s death
Was mother’s sorrow;
That day was her day,
Loss was tomorrow.
Not too old to feel the bile,
that back-breaking anger,
that feeling of death in my heart.
Not too old to turn on their smiles,
transparent thin things,
wanting to raise an open palm; to strike.
Not too old to watch an ancient one of them
lament the encasing of her man,
the jutting-bellied cracker, and smile..
Not too old to count their grave falling
like notches of God’s blessing, to say;
“Shit, I outlived you, I outlived you.”
Not too old to still my tongue,
to hum a blue gospel, while my soul
wails that old cry of motherlessness.
Not too old to dream of blood,
the taste of iron on my lips,
the swell of power in my breast.
Not too old to hear the nightriders,
to face the starched sheets of this South,
with trembling, with the heart of a child.
Not too old, not too old,
not too old, not too old.
The art of forgiveness is not for the living,
it is for the dead, who cannot rest,
who scream in their graves when the living
will not let them go.
Forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive them that trespass against us.
But the dead have trespassed against the living,
and the living against the dead.
So who will forgive whom?
The living who are still sinning,
or the dead who have paid the price?
Her son is not a comma or a full stop
in the long sentence of your life.
He is a boy who loves to laugh
and to eat fried dumplings.
He is a boy who loves his mother.
He is a boy who will not be a boy for long.
So when you look at him, see him.
See him, I say, and not the space
he will one day leave behind.
