Jamaican Elegy For An Intellectual (Rex. R. Nettleford) Part Ii

Tirelessly rising, like cerosee tea to them, and apple to me Tell them I am the Sankofa of the morning, shall we dance again I was the Nightingale Midas could keep in the cage, the new sea To sail, the festival beyond the extravaganza of old pain Trim sail and bottle torch, but never weep with dry eyes Bring flag and Mframadan down the pole and skies Tell them the river journeys on, it comes for me I am its harvest, I am its fruit, I am its Gethsemane. ii You young ones must away from your rage to my age tree Take this stick of light, this magic of wisdom, this bright sage Carry him like an argument to Pharaoh’s face and so see Deliverance from the bloody seas of dumb guns and carnage Let us dismantle the sorrow of ignorance, the need that chains Us to the deaf ears of our broken and eternal complaints For this native son, this black beautiful scholar was our wage And from this griot and dancer we take the lessons of our age. And always may I remember I am only a branch, I belong to a tree Bigger than my baobab of dreams, I drink from where roots draw The sweet water of revival, and quenched my thirst for history And boons of culture. Always I now write for us, I write our law Yet tongueless tongue-ing in Babel’s callous kingdom Belly grinder, I rise to dance in new sheaves of freedom The whip crack on black backs the sun could not dim Cannot stop the clutchie smoking memory of him