Poetry of Kamau Brathwaite: Legba-gctid29061

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

Legba
 
     from "New World"
 
 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.