kamau brathwaite — Blogworld

Inspired by Christian Campbell, a celebration of the work and mind and art of the man I claim as the greatest Caribbean poet, Kamau Brathwaite. Here’s one of my favourites.

Legba

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.

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.

—from The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy