Fire - Kwame Dawes

He is the man with the axe with its white edge.

He was born to a time of fire.

He took a pickaxe and walked to the rail

track and asked for work; and he stood

by the sparks and forging fire, standing

there as if the heat is food, pure food.

He is the forger of plans, and the man

who has vowed to be a friend

of fire, vowed to teach all flame

the democracy of heat. He was

born to a time of fire; a man

born to turn broken engines

into piston and grease, a man that sees

the world as a machine, everything

will atrophy; all fires muster die,

but while the bellows blow. Here is

an ordinary man, big hands, big

dreams, moving through the earth;

a stranger always, as sojourner.

Trains thunder through the green

world; a farm stretches away

from him, to cross from one end

of the country to the other, is

the journey from fence to fence,

the grand expanse of someone else’s

land that he knows like it is his.

Above, the crackle of a low flying

plane, and in the river, the clunking

of a steam boat—this is progress,

this is the machine, and a black

man stands in the edge of the monstrosity

of iron and knows he must

be a forge where all heat will channel

energy. Where a body can move,

break ground, full hands, where

a man can be at the top, commending

the elements; these are the days

of fire, the days of charred bodies

dangling fro trees, the days

of burnt out towns, negroes running

to find their way in the belly

of cities, these are the days

when fire must meet fire

he was born to a time of fire,

let him burn, baby, let him burn.

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Kwame Dawes (born Ghana) Jamaica (born in Ghana)

Source: Poéfrika 2.0