An Idyll of the Past

I am of Maroon extraction, dear My grandmother's grandfather fought Without surrender or tanant of fear And two times with Boukman caught And twice unlike him escaped To die in a rocky cliff, proudly brave While the freed slave escaped He held the pass alone unto his grave. But my grandmother, mixed his blood Gave me a half German grandfather, good! At evening when oral tongues tattle truth These stories were the pomegranate Juice that fed the worthiness of ragged youth. My father from aboriginal state Rose and span his flight from teacher To banker's clerk, and then to police Against the national disorder of labor Hankering for a new identity of peace. He found his, a veterinarian, at last But for his broken wing there was no cast To compensate, he dreamed of children Into whom all his resources were poured Rising to the top of government, send Them to colleges far away, they bored With the magic of his island never returned. And I, he died when I was fourteen Before he carved me from ash for his urn Dote on his past like a child unweened, While suckling from the simplicity of mother Whose clothes on the line reeked of heather. O but mother too, was only half of Africa And yet despite the latent Spanish in her I am your ebon tree, your chocolate or sepia And when I dream there in the unblur Stands my ancient, my vast begining, pride Like a Serengeti from Ashanti to Zulu lure O this child has many kings in his inside And yet no kingdom did I claim but the bush That surrounds my Canterbury with its hush And the braod pastures on Knoxwood's plain O to reign there in childhood still Running in and out with swallows in the rain To eat the pulp of fruit from every hill That balmed me I was bruised. Too harsh Were schools for the vision in my skin My teachers were lilacs, things in the marsh My student eyes eclipsed by the fins, things Still bright, or a sudden gasp of wings.