-
From Clips
- Callaloo
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 24, Number 3, Summer 2001
- pp. 699-706
- 10.1353/cal.2001.0117
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Callaloo 24.3 (2001) 699-706
[Access article in PDF]
from No. 34 (Winter 1988)
from Clips
(for Frank Collymore, 1893-1980)
Edward Kamau Brathwaite
II
Plantation
Dat harf-assed inherited plantation
left as his benefice by some disgruntled guilty massacouraman
was up to wreck and ruin
weeds were killing the cane waves and there was no one to pull
them outbury them then or burn them
but the fires destroyed auras and auroras of unpaid-for-sweat
contours of flesh that had been shaped by love
in the middle of the trash bone sticks when you stepped on crackle
the shimmering landscape ignored youtake the boy from school
and so years after dust silverworm cratered but hardly dog-eared
i found your latin primer quarter touch unsteadiedyou clearly would not understand
those regular irregulars like do.dare.dedi.datumthe archaic algebra the undernourished shakespeare
merchant of venice and surprising cymbelene
you spent months with soot on your fingers (the black
would not rub off) not knowing what to do with the asp [End Page 699]
that was itching your eyes. your pants were slack
and baggy often too long frayed at the heels
sluggish with yard-dirt and hurt or
sometimes too short: showing the skin where the sun
didn't torch through the holes of your old fashioned shocks.
the buggy that you loved and played at driver in was
sold: the horse, thin chestnut stallion with the bruised and bony
haunches
slipped and broke a fretlock and was shot . dead .
cold . by your insensitive half-brother
he who talked with his mouth full a dumplin
who ate with his hat on at table except sundees
you remembered feathers a broken pillar in the wind and the sad
drone of flies
if you had liked the bottle you could have started drinking from
upwards to now. and whynot: there were rumshops everywhere: ambivalent as chapels: their
captains
would have trusted you: there were two elder brothers at the
mount gay factory
had you liked women you could have had them picked and
pregnant in
no fuckin time at all. they black-eyed ex-slave smooth-thighed
giggles
passed by you slowly strong-necked sweating softly head-
ing cane or ground provisions: balancing their water-buckets withtheir doom
cast eyes. stopped when you spoke, their voices like a cloud across
the canefields
yet when they laughed you heard the hair-springs of their ecstasy
their scythe shaped backs and buttocks of the goddess [End Page 700]
and they were keen on brown-skin fathers. for them plantation
wreck
and ruin still meant pride and prejudice and certain in-
grained customs and a relationship and attitude and distance use
of eye
they called respect. and of course there was the house and horseand buggy
and the treasure-chest of money underneath your father's door
while they lived with their mothers in those one-room huts of
wood and thatchand shingle rut
man: had you liked women: wow: but you were careful. sir-
cumspectacles your tie-head great-aunt called it: one or two little
tings, you know, from time to time, korblimemanbut not like the brothers
for you no squealing bastards hugged-up by show-off patient
leather mothers
their wet-nose nipples jerking juice at clinics
no pay-day pilgrims at your debtors door no loud-mout would-be
breddasbawling out how they gine lick you dung an leave you tangle-up
upside-down in de eddoes
Papa Cock & Papa Cane
1
The sunrise was his cock and throttle
throat of a new day his old woman
conceptions taking place sometimes between midnight and creakydawn [End Page 701]
midmorning with his sons on sunday
out walking going for drives
just sweating around and reading playing games
teaching them how to make windmills from cane
bone fly
kites sail
paper boats milk
goats wash
dogs drivestakes around the wounded fragiles of the flower garden
at noon his hat hot look/ing backwards up to heaven his
achievement
he sits and smiles
oil merchant bank balance
health insurance premiums secure
his...