Christ have mercy on all sleeping things!
From that dog rotting down Wrightson Road
to when I was a dog on these streets;
if loving these islands must be my load,
out of corruption my soul takes wings.
But they had started to poison my soul
with their big house, big car, big-time bohbohl,
coolie, nigger, Syrian, and French Creole,
so I leave it for them and their carnival—
I taking a sea bath, I gone down the road.
I know these islands from Monos to Nassau,
a rusty head sailor with sea-green eyes
that they nickname Shabine, the patois for
any red nigger, and I, Shabine, saw
when these slums of empire was paradise.
I’m just a red nigger who love the sea,
I had a sound colonial education,
I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me,
and either I’m nobody, or I’m a nation,
The back and forth, traveling between worlds and philosophies and ways of life. To know both and then choose One....yet the other ones will still always be inside the mind.
ReplyDelete"I leave it for them and their carnival"!
What a powerful poem!
DeleteThe use of the n word especially moves me. It reminds me of that song "I Believe" by Blessid Union of Souls. The lyrics, "And he'll see me as a person not just a black man." That not just a black man reminds me of the poem and narrator. Maybe I'm off, but it seems to me that the narrator and people in his life can't see the narrator for more than just ________ (add title here).
The narrator brings back this message and paradox with the end of this passage but presenting the either or situation.