In Thanksgiving - For Ethno Workers

Thank you, for excavating from dead tongue Under midden of lies The archive of our own history The outlines of identity So we under obscurity white sheet Could find resurrection of self In another voice oppressed But unconceding of its comeliness. Before I grew old I was only school Afraid to be nobody unless I conformed To class, and status and creed. I could not see then how I consented To condone the designation of a weed. Before I was old I did not even know weeds were revolutionaries Resisting the pharmacopia of gods And heal me in the old ways again. Let this vernacular, this dialect From in between the interspaces of existence Reworking the problem of my preservation, Let it flowers like weed Gushing from unexpected places after rain. Thanking you for understanding how to spade With it the introspection of itself Match with veins, leaves and flowers The pattern of remain alive. The tongue is archive of the soul, and language The repository of all the culture holds. Sure, folk songs are sweets, but our stories are more Than words. Babel has no meaning If it confused only words to flock in nearer trees. Something deeper there was lost Perhaps the lens by which we tell who we are The frightening part of God, The vision that must be consumed in hell The staircase that if we trod Would tear the scream of worlds from us Making a new dilemma out of dust. I sing not for Babel heights but the rights To flock the founding tree of truth. Thank you, for permitting me to speak again To taste the lilt and roll of visceral sounds Wearing glottis masks and labial screens Spreading the germ of belief And the sanctity of self in an ubiquitous air. Folk people, balmyard man, healer Kuminah giver, obeah veteran Abeng blower, anancy teller, long spoon cook Your anthropology will be the first page Of my exumed biography, my life given back Like raft to me. I am going to dig the moon.