Norman Washington Manley (From Pages)

The mind is a womb Copulate it Let the semen of reason Part the legs of its cervix And you will see When moth struggles before its born The power of its dreams for flight Words are eggs, you know Virginal eggs, I saw him hatch them into bricks Of ideas that he could carve Like an Edna exhibit All copulation must spontaneous A true gentleman has that gift Not to force his feelings On his betrothed He was also scholar, you know A sort of poet That prefer metaphors to the conflict Of chisel and wood He had such a mastery of the rhetoric I mean he understood them better than us For he did not only speak like them But spoke their strategy better than them I sometimes wondered how he knew himself Apart. Its sort of seemed ironic That he did have the anger that Fanon composed Unless wit is a subtle part of it May be environment is such a part of it The cool, I mean We say that about Manchesterians Roxborough, If it could produce the soldier-scholar Could not have produced just a little fire Even for the cremation of his brother, Roy Perhaps it was the mix blood ... Busta said that his mother was Taino I do not understand is who mixed them though There is an overt statement of force to be made A rape scrubbed from the memory For how could one half of hm Become so invisible ... The mission I mean. I must rule More than wood, and more Than water For my destiny Is more than what men may leech So I am not exploited I am killed for this robbery And here I am left A dead man on a throne Here I am Shrouded with self government And staring into the empty eyes Of children So why do I love him then Was it alone because my father Fashioned my world for me Gave me this icon For proximity the barbarians Who snatched my mother Washing her white linen one day From the sweet river Do not take that thought to the bank Where my children play This man deserves his accolade If only for taking blindness from my mind If only for letting me know The chain had never rattled their And even in their own words I could look at the world And ask "why not?" He gave me a ladder to my education That was some gift, Quite the best of all I am given O it so beautiful to copulate the mind Or hold hands through the annals And see this Manley, This little fountain of great ambition Flowing at my lips.