Cudjoe.

CUDJOE

   Cudjoe rises from his placid place,
   Crosses the boundary of shifting land to stare down
   The mutinous mountainside, past a blooming

   Frangipani; its soft flowers are laden with milk.
   There in this new place, Barbados bound,
   He finds William and Mary on Adam's Castle land.

   William won't let Mary 'lone.
   All she got is corn pap and pone,
   Calabash dishes and wooden spoons

   Iron necklaces and coconut brooms.
   I'm an archival orphan bound to these leaves.
   Storing up treasures in heaven is not for thieves.

   It is more successful than here on earth.
   I see clearly the sum of my symmetry
   John and Francis Jane squared the entirety of me.

   Charles Cledan and Gwendolin
   Spread easy-wipe linoleum on the floor.
   She left six of us, equal in sex, before an open door.

   Before the onset of winter
   We failed to place a pillow under her head.
   Rest, dear mother, sleep well.

   Your image will comfort me in my new home.
   Your offspring will sit before God's throne of grace
   And sing old redemption songs.

   Cudjoe mingles present thoughts with memories
   His head throb sensational as he smoothens
   The wrinkles of his mistress's white skin.

   She nestles her head in his hands.
   While the poet, standing in the mountain mists,
   Fixes his gaze on the snake's writhing motion.

   Home is now Hewenarro's sacred groves.
   There Cudjoe sleeps with vulcans,
   And teases the goddesses' desire into a raging fire.

   "Moi calle en ville, Ti-Jean
   I am going to town, Uncle Jean.
   I have an audience with her majesty, Queen Helen.

   I walk with winds whipping me
   Castries arms embrace me by the sea.
   Cudjoe follows me and scolds in metallic tones.

   Golden nuggets of sunlight shot from a bent shaft,
   Pelt their way from the sky, past vacuous clouds
   To lie in Helen's lap high up on Gros Islets.

   In her empty places of worship, slaves
   Mate with the chieftains' daughters.
   The brown child of Carib strain, like the swift-footed

   Gazelle, runs for cover behind his hammock.
   Cudjoe climbs the twin peaks to proclaim
   His love. Helen spurns his overtures; heaps scorn

   On his head; and hisses like a rattle snake.
   He bounds down the mountainside, followed
   By Helen's resounding rage. "One Soufriere is as good

   As another, "he exclaims, as he walks along the shore.
   He hides his shame behind a jute bag.
   Patois resonates in the air and his

   Ear, attuned to its sibilants, indicate he is unsafe.
   He mounts his canoe, unhooks its tether, circles the water
   With an oar and makes his way to Calliaqua.

   He drops anchor in a cove, black sand at his feet.
   Deep in the molten core of his being,
   Cudjoe's stomach rumbles hurt.

   He views the secret coves. Here the slaves slipped.
   Here they became missing pages of long memory.
   One morning he wake up wid rum tugging at he guts,

   An' de noise o' de rain was soundin' he name.
   Cudjoe mount de crescent waves wid his brown
   Felt hat floppin' 'bout his ears. In de shimmerin'

   Light o' de sea, he work himself into ecstasy.
   This brown Carib, no longer pure in her veins,
   Hails him, a vagabond in flight, assails

   Him, and takes away his birthright.
   When dawn and dusk become one,
   Will the gods come down from the mountain?

   Come down to the ground; come down, drawn down.
   They pause at the riverbanks where warriors
   Exchange weapons for food. Cudjoe stands

   Under the cliffs, the seat of the Siboneys' rule.
   The moderns hide pre-Columbian petroglyphs
   In the Mesopotamia Valley, you can pay the captains

   For a fiver ride down to the sea and see the Yambou river maids
   Smocking dresses from coconut leaves, whose trees house
   Whistling warblers and whose songs pale to Amazon parrots.

   On the mountain's ledge, the crested hummingbird
   Sings a melody mainly heard near Fort Charlotte.
   The fort done rise some six hundred feet

   It lies beyond the boundaries of treachery.
   Cudjoe hears Caribs' cries about Captain Bligh's trickery.
   In his canoe, rocking to the beat of the crescent waves,

   He fondles the oars and thinks of Helen..
   He paddles east amidst sprays of brine. Seagulls
   Reveal the way to putrid Carlisle Bay. He sings halting

   Songs of praise to Shango; to Obatala; to the fire god, Ogun.
   His arrival in Barbadoes is repulsed by the natives.
   "I am Cudjoe, a Mandingo brave," he declares.

   "I come to free you from bondage and save
   The rest of the race, cursed as it is."
   "I ain't know wey yuh come from," says the village

   Elder, "but you welcome to stay here wid we."
   The obeah man lifts a jug to his head and drinks
   His fill. Then he hands the rest to the invited guest.

   He welcomes him to the island paradise,
   The land of the Ibos and the Coramantines.
   On Dover beach, Bajans play a song of retreat.

   The desert child remembers the night the full
   Moon shone down when she yielded her virginity.
   Cudjoe is wrapped in the folds of island contours.

   He feels the wind at his back. It was his first experience.
   He could not penetrate the guarded valley.
   Weep world! Weep for long memory!

   Subdued by white-washed necromancy, he wakes.
   Samantha's pregnant and quakes with fear.
   Dawn rises and clears mists from her eyes.

   She shakes with the ague of her mother's discovery.
   Name me no names of fabled warriors.
   They cannot wrench this serpent from its tree.

   If she jumps up and down or falls from window sill;
   If she bands her belly tight, will she be pregnant still?
   Gully root, lignum vitae tea, bitter root are just frills.

   Bring me the fire! Bring me the forge!
   Bring aloes, any old purge!
   I'm stripped down, dangling down.

   I'm naked in this foreign land
   Where I was born amidst mud flows
   And the raging waters of torrential rains.

   I searched the soil for my kind. I lacked a sense
   Of beginning and was without any direction.
   This land where Africa and England meet at my feet

   Spawns a race destined to be masters of their fate.
   Oh that I could return this Gaulic name to its source,
   Free of any shame and clothe myself in harmony with

   The land of my ancestry! Alas, which land I speak of?.
   Is it Dahomey, Benin in a spin,
   Or that rugged English countryside whose tongue

   The Druids used to wake the dumbfounded silence
   Presumed dead? In the valley of the shadows of death
   I shall remember grandmother's request.

   She wanted to restore my faith in humanity.
   Yet, here I am chilling my bones in off-shore choices.
   I still call upon dead voices to deliver me.

   The crowded thoughts are still there, bubbling
   Or rumbling like storm clouds blackened by rage.
   They roar over this puny rock, in ambivalence.

   I beg of you, Samantha, to lay down the pains of past years,
   To remember the night you bled; your blood ran to the ground.
   It was a symbol of young love. Below the unseen surface,

   A bed of gleaming green grass cushioned your body.
   The ring of dancing silhouettes was not your mother
   Nor father in search of you. They were mile trees

   That bent their ears to the ground to listen to our
   Sounds of carnal pleasure. The unsung rhythms
   Were stretched tautly in the night, and echoed our love forever.

   This land is decadent, Sam. It nurtures sexual appetites
   Among the homeless who change their spots on the boulevards.
   You sting me silently with those stares, severing all that's well.

   In Montreal where the winter winds crawl up the skirts to St.
   Catherine's
   Ribs, where the tilt man hurries his pace, where prostitutes
   Knock themselves silly ignoring AIDS and chicanery,

   Cudjoe travels in search of a new place to call home.
   The fin-tin-tin of the steel pan ignites his passion still.
   This northern land becomes the source of his restoration.

   Cudjoe, his walking stick in his hand,
   Draws Cerebus' head in the sand and
   Before the arrival of damning daylight, heads for Jamaica.

   He cuts a path to freedom in the Blue Mountains,
   With bounty seekers at his heels but he's bent on freedom.
   He moves on making new discoveries.

   He maps his hell between sea and shore,
   Imbues his mind with ancient lore, and waits for a signal,
   For he no longer bears bravery in his sinews.

   The fibers of his thoughts are thin.
   His vision of the past remain locked
   Behind failing eyes too dim to see.

   He knew the new world destiny of the ships
   Long before they set sail from African ports.
   Now, a sapling in the dark for too long,

   He has lost the sinews of bravery.
   Survival is unlearned in this new geography
   Where harmattans are absent and droughts reign.

   Between thoughts and action, sitting on a hill,
   Cudjoe looks out to the sea and traces
   A long, billowy trail back to Africa.

   Oh iponri! Damballa Hwedo! Obatala!
   Ogun Batala! Padre! Dada!
   Time is longer than twine, yuh know!