For Kamau Brathwaite at 86

Seven Worlds.  Copyright  © 2015 by Gary Butte.

 

“Where are the open spaces now

clear sky, the stars, horizons’ distances?”

KB, "The Forest-Masks"

 

We looked with you, pathfinder

into great halls, high spheres

of the seven kingdoms,

 

and you sang our lives

to memory

before the Golden Stool was lost

 

when we had our names

and names of the gods

 

and wombs of strong trees

were oracles under the skin of our hands.

From islands’ scorned syllables

your horn lifted nations’ new tongues

 

Castries to Kingston

Brixton to Brooklyn

Axum to Kumasi

 

as they now are.  And it

it is now

now the Times of Salt

 

the age of griots archived

their heads hung in dark corners

their songs obsolete as vinyl

 

while ballheads of Babylon

deconstruct themselves

over abysses of mockery;

 

but children

who have not genuflected to Baal

who have remembered again

 

whom you name from the drum-

beating of your love

come, come, come

 

with oil of coconut,

bread of cassava, gooseberry wine,

tablets of fruit of your word,  Kamau.