Versione Italiana | Nota biografica | Versione lettura |
I dream that I am washing
my mother's body in the night sea
and that she sings slow
and that she still breathes.
I see my sweet mother
a plump mermaid in my dreams
and I wash her white hair
with ambergris and foaming seaweed.
I watch my mother under water
gather the loose pearls she finds,
scrub them free from nacre
and string them on a lost fishing line.
I hear my dark mother
speaking sea-speak with pilot fish,
showing them how to direct barks
that bear away our grief and anguish.
I pray my mother breaks free
from the fish pots and marine chores
of her residence beneath the sea,
and that she rides a wild white horse.
Great grandmother
was a guinea woman
wide eyes turning
the corners of her face
could see behind her
her cheeks dusted with
a fine rash of jet-bead warts
that itched when the rain set up.
Great grandmother's waistline
the span of a headman's hand
slender and tall like a cane stalk
with a guinea woman's antelope-quick walk
and when she paused
her gaze would look to sea
her profile fine like some obverse impression
on a guinea coin from royal memory.
It seems her fate was anchored
in the unfathomable sea
for great grandmother caught the eye of a sailor
whose ship sailed without him from Lucea harbour.
Great grandmother's royal scent of
cinnamon and scallions
drew the sailor up the straits of Africa,
the evidence my blue-eyed grandmother
the first Mulatta
taken into backra's household
and covered with his name.
They forbade great grandmother's
guinea woman presence
they washed away her scent of
cinnamon and scallions
controlled the child's antelope walk
and called her uprisings rebellions.
But, great grandmother
I see your features blood dark
appearing
in the children of each new
breeding
the high yellow brown
is darkening down.
Listen, children
it's great grandmother's turn.
Yellow/brown woman
fingers smelling always of onions
My mother raises rare blooms
and waters them with tea
her birth waters sang like rivers
My mother is now me
My mother had a linen dress
the color of the sky
and stored lace and damask
tablecloths
to pull shame out of her eye.