Venice masks

Wednesday, 13 November 2019

Hawk - Kamau Brathwaite

Image of two children holding hands
these children mek
dis pack with you
& yet they shoes lie
gape & laughin .emp-
ty blood-
(y) in the burn. in
grounn...

o come back Black Hawk
come back come back

turn
yr dark volume higher
up . let it plough
field of patient terraces
again. long lonely roars
of corn for Ginsberg Whit-
man for Hart
Crane for Louis Ornette al-
ways for Rollins & for
Trane. for wind for
snares for turrets tunn-
els under-
wound & underground
& underrriver.  stair-
cases pour-
ing never-end-
ing down their space
w/no xit w/no amaz-
ing escape face no
save-
ing grace for all the
           suns & mothers
of the murthered world
the headless heedless
streetless IIIWorld wo-
man's infants aban-
don on hospital steps
in pothole sidewalks
full of spite. full law
on light-
less deconstruction sites
in gashes
at the sides of palaces
in signalling banana
leaves.  the roll-
ingstock compartments
of our railway carr-
ages.  in joy-
less bull-
rush rushes.  in  care-
full folded straw
the metal hearse
inside the mental horse
of Troy. three
hundred fifty firemen
them-
selves be-
coming fire.  the glow-
ing shar-
coal engines of their
eyes still howl-
ing ishak me-
shak & adednego

Kamau Brathwaite (born 1930) Barbados
Source: Born to Slow Horses, Kamau Brathwaite, Wesleyan University Press, 2005

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