Bongo Man

There was a bongoman, and he dreaming Where the rock hovered above the blue sea Looked through the white mist of a dew drenched morning And clenched tight his memory of history Black as midnight: showed me shining like day Black Starliners, and his tears melted away. Walk softly let me sing my song, redemption brings The whip to silence and the heart to lift its wings And then he laughed aloud, his heart beating Drums like a flock of bird wings. This called me Inexplicably to stand before him feasting My eyes on his joy, and his tangled beauty Of hair and form, without Samson's great flaws I heard his covenant to Afric's laws: No swine flesh in Selassie I temple No labor for the rag of foul Babylon Peace and love recovered of nature's principle Keep's the dove in the flesh of the lion Eating herbs as a lamb. And high above The sea, the forest throbs with songs of love He told his sorrows in Psalms recounting Another's tragedy through which he claimed His own, and whipped scuttled pride to rise surmounting The shambled faith imposed on bodies maimed By tyrant's culture and chains, to find The cliff where Marcus Garvey led the blind And made them see with power of his words Towering Kilmanjaros of beauty Breaking the sun, splintering its silver bright swords Into strands, opening the majesty Of wonders past on plain banana leaf Feeding Anansi duckuno from grief It does not matter anymore, the blames The city lies upon his head; he cried His tears for Babylon melting in oral flames Bongo with Jah lives iver in the tide Of Rastafari righteous inity Behold the bongoman in divinity I was late to school to know the bright lies That silence permitted against his pain The bongoman on the misty sea fastened his eyes And searched for his Judah's Lion again For out of him was life forever, dread Life sweeter than the heaven of the dead. And those ships, the angels of Marcus' dream Make good covenant with the paucity Of truth, and hold the bongoman in moonbeam Dancing on rock point of belief, certainty Mixed like bitter herbs in the ital food Sweet as drums on the morning bright of mood.