Fierce Departures: The Poetry of Dionne Brand

Pilate was that river I never crossed as a child...

Pilate was that river I never crossed as a child. A woman, my mother, was weeping on its banks, weeping for the sufferer she would become, she a too black woman weeping, those little girls trailing her footsteps reluctantly and without love for this shaking woman blood and salt in her mouth, weeping, that river gushed past her feet blocked her flight ... and go where, lady, weeping and go where, turning back to face herself now only the oblique shape of something without expectation, her body composed in doubt then she’d come to bend her back, to dissemble, then to stand on anger like a ledge, a tilting house, the crazy curtain blazing at her teeth. A woman who thought she was human but got the message, female and black and somehow those who gave it to her were like family, mother and brother, spitting woman at her, somehow they were the only place to return to and this gushing river had already swallowed most of her, the little girls drowned on its indifferent bank, the river hardened like the centre of her, spinning chalk stone on its frill, burden in their slow feet, they weeping, she, go on home, in futility. There were dry-eyed cirri tracing the blue air that day. Pilate was that river I ran from leaving that woman, my mother, standing over its brutal green meaning and it was over by now and had become so ordinary as if not to see it any more, that constant veil over the eyes, the blood-stained blind of race and sex. The Poetry of Dionne Brand / 3 ...