1
Helpless like this
leader –
less like this,
we met you lover,
warrior, hater,
coming through the files
of the forest
soft foot
to soft soil
of silence:
we met in the soiled
tunnel of leaves.
Click lock your
your fire
lock fore
arm fire –
arm flashed
fire and our firm
flesh, flame
warm, fly
bitten warriors
fell.
How long
how long
O Lord
O devil
O fire
O flame
have we walked
have we journeyed
to place
to this meeting
this shock
and shame
in the soiled
silence.
How long have we
travelled down
valleys down
slopes, silica
glinted, stones
dry as water,
to this flash
of flame in the forest.
O who now will help
us, help –
less, no
hope, no
Cortez to come.
Prempeh imprisoned,
Tawiah dead,
Asantewa bridled
and hung
O who now can help
us: Geronimo, Tackie,
Montezuma to come.
And the fire, our
fire, fashioning locks,
rocks darker than iron;
fire betrayed us once
in our village; now
in the forest, fire falls
us like birds, hot pods
in our belly. Fire
falls walls, fashions
these fire –
locks darker than iron,
and we filed down the path
linked in a new
clinked silence of iron.
2
It will be a long before we see
this land again, these trees
again, drifting inland with the sound
of surf, smoke rising
It will be a long time before we see
these farm again, soft we slow green
again: Aburi, Akwamu,
mist rising
Watch now these old men, cold
clear eye’d like the water we ride,
skilful with sail and the ropen and the tackle
Watch now these cold men, bold
as the water banging the bow in a sudden wild tide,
indifferent, it seems, to the battle
of wind in the water;
for our blood, mixed
soon with their passion in sport,
in difference, in anger,
will create soils, new souls, new
ancestors; will flow like this tide fixed
to the star by which this ship floats
to new worlds, new waters, new
harbours, the pride of our ancestors mixed
with the wind and water
the flesh and the flies, the whips and the fixed
fear of pain in this chained and welcoming port
hoping my children’s eye
will learn
not green alone
not Africa alone
not dark alone
not fear
but Cortez
and Drake
Magellan
and that Ferdinand
the sailor
who pierced the salt to this land.