In a bare night without comfort
stood like an infant hearing a drum:
Shadows and green grass spinning
but clutched at a world without nearingLike dark ball rising from nothing
hurling curse at me and full of scorn:
Bare night without comfort
stood like an infant hearing a drum.
Martin Carter in The Kind Eagle (1952)

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She has since unraveled
her long wavy tresses
and placed the jewels to rest
The ocean waves
play a melancholic song as
[…]

Down the river Essequibo where the Pomeroon meetsTo get my pot of Gold. My journey to completeUnder the shores like men of yore. Toiling in the sun and heatOf this blessed earth. My melodic songs will seekLike poetry and the reverent hymn. With reverence meek
I bow my mud -caked feet. On the ground that […]

Even in that place of final exile
among tombs, and mechanical inscriptions,
each leaf is a different green,
flower of a different kind
of red and yellow; also each ripe fruit
tumult of a really different seed
there, in that place.
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Me try haad haad fuh brukway,
talk proper
hat potato inna me mout,
fuh steam out d-sin-taxs
in English metering
an design calypso
inna two step waltz
of military timing
but
too much genip fasten pun man lip
too much jamoon stain pun man tongue.
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my body’s a hallowed
stick of bone, a flute
through which you pipe
your melody.
I am those parallel
eyes of air
along my spine,
which measure
your heavy rhythms
vibrating in my marrow.
play gentle, love
my frail reed’s
single stem
can scarcely hold
this rhapsody.
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I come from the nigger yard of yesterday
leaping from the oppressors’ hate
and the scorn of myself;
from the agony of the dark hut in the shadow
and the hurt of things;
from the long days of cruelty and the long nights of pain
down to the wide streets of to-morrow, of the next day
leaping I come, who cannot […]

Dis is one recitation
one declaration
dat ketch it riddum
from man empty belly drum
‘oman dry up bubbie.
Sufferation na come
in couplets
metaphor nor allegory
it lan’ by community
by family.

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Grotesque jewels, they hang
in my closet beside prom dresses
and red pumps.
When petticoats are sleeping,
they continue to jangle.
They make a strange noise.
Moonlight shadows their gauntness.
Pumps and brogues are blind to their squeals
Veils thin to a fringe on their bony blades.
They could tell a tale.
They want a say, without doubt.
Long ago, they were supply fleshed.
But then, […]

In Gibraltar Straits,
pirates in search of El Dorado
masked and machete-bearing
kidnapped me.
Holding me to ransom,
they took my jewels and my secrets
and dismembered me.
The reckoning lasted for years.
Limbs and parts eventually grew:
a new nose, arms skilful and stronger,
sight after the gutted pits could bear a leaf.
It took centuries.
In the cave where they kept me,
a strange beast […]