Afro-Insularity

On the islands they left a legacy of hybrid words and sorrowful plantations

rusted sugar mills breathless prows resonant aristocratic names and the legend of a shipwreck on Sete Pedras

Arriving from the North they cast anchor here by mandate or by chance in the service of their king: navigators and pirates slave traders thieves contrabandists common folk also rebel outcasts and Jewish children so tender that they faded like sun-dried ears of corn

The ships brought compasses trinkets seeds experimental plants inhuman bitterness a stone monument as pallid as wheat and other cargo without dreams nor roots because the whole island was a port and a road with no return all of the hands were black pitchforks and hoes

And alive they became stuck on the rocks like scabs—every coffee tree now breathes a dead slave

And on the islands remained incisive arrogant statues on street corners more than a hundred churches and chapels for a mere thousand square kilometers and the insurgent syncretism of nativity scenes. And there remains the palatial cadence of the Ussua Creole dance the aroma of garlic and olive oil

in traditional clay pots and in the calulu the bay leaf mixed with palm oil and the fragrance of rosemary and basil from family gardens

And to the ticking of insular clocks were cast spectres—implements of the empire in a structure of ambiguous clarities and secular condiments patron saints and demolished fortresses inexpensive wines and shared auroras

At times I think of their livid skeletons their fetid hair on the sea shore Here, on this fragment of Africa where, facing South, a word dawns on high like a banner of distress