Legba

Kamau Brathwaite

1

Today god came to church

like a lame old man on a crutch.

 

He had fought in the last war

and has ribbons to show for

 

it; knows Burma, Malaya and has been

to Singapore; gets a small pension

 

but apart from that

not very much attention.

 

His children eat dirt,

are pot-

 

bellied, knobble-

kneed sticks down

 

to their ball-

bearing ankles;

 

the drifting sand

ruins their eyes;

 

they go to school to the head-

master's cries,

 

read a black-

board of words, angles,

 

lies;

they fall

 

over their examinations.

It is a fence that surrounds them.

 

Those that are brown

enough, hobble

 

into a maimed world of banks, books, insurance, business.

There is not

 

much thanks from the rest of the hot

population.

 

2

And black black black

the black birds clack

in the shak shak tree

 

the slack

wing'd gaulin swings

through the fishnet air;

 

the pear

tree ripens, queen of the ring-

ing brambles;

 

the jack 

bird sings, dream-

ing of jewels, eyes,

 

shell-less worms; the

sugar=cane screams

swinging under the steel

 

cutlass;

bless us bless us

cries the shorn rain

 

cut from its thunder,

sting-

ing the cactus;

 

the drought

tickles the root

of the clammy-

 

cherry tree; doubt

ripples the fruit

lakes, snap-

 

ping the bamboo,

crack-

ing the blue.


Main Location:

Barbados