In my morning
I imitated the bougainvillea
(in appearances
I am hybrid).
I gave forth defiant alleluias
of flowering,
covered my aridity
with red-petalled blisters
grouped close, from far
they were a borealis
of save-face-flowers.
In the middle of my life span
my trunk’s not so limber
my sap flows thicker.
My region has posted signs
that speak of scarce water.
At night, God, I feel
my feet powder.
Lord, let the preying worms
wait to feast in vain
In this noon of my orchard
O send me deep rain.
And one day the rains came; and the replenishing floods descended.
9
Redemption is the key
I AM ALWAYS drawn to stories in human history in which someone is redeemed. Instances where a debt owed is cancelled, when some good soul comes forward and pays off the bond price that sets the indebted free.
As I have not found many such stories of Redemption in the history of my own people, Redemption has become my keyword, and I am hoping that in time others will join me on the Redemption train, which ideally leaves from Redemption Ground Market in the city of Kingston – once a cholera cemetery that became a market by day and a nocturnal meeting place for faith-keepers of African spirituality and foundation builders of the Rastafarian religion such as Leonard Howell and Joseph Nathaniel Hibbert.
There were women who were gathered there too, women whose names I do not know, but they were there, and engaged in the active Redemption of their people through the uncompromising rejection of mental slavery.
Many of these men and women had been followers of Alexander Bedward, the charismatic preacher who had galvanised many thousands of followers with his anti-colonial rhetoric and his promise to fly away home taking his followers with him. A redemptive move, up and away from the misery and desolation of life in post-slavery Jamaica. We will never know if he could have made good on this promise, because his career was cut short by the authorities and he ended his life in a mental institution.
But these men and women, his followers, kept on, and there on Redemption Ground they fashioned a religion with a God who looked more like them, and one day one of its followers, who was born out of the meeting of Europe and Africa, wrote a song inspired by the words of one of the world’s great freedom fighters, Marcus Garvey.
The song is called ‘Redemption Song’, and it has become an anthem for people all over the world.
Implied in the words is the plea for us all to help to sing, to write Redemption songs; songs and stories, for the rest of my life, this is what I hope to be doing.
10
‘Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise’
AS A CHILD growing up on the island of Jamaica, it seemed to me that people, especially women, were always singing hymns as they went about their business. Women bending low over wash tubs, or standing knee deep in swift running rivers, would produce scrub rhythms from the friction of soaped cloth rubbed hard between fists; and over that wash-wash rhythm, they would moan hymns like ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus’.
Women ironing would sing too, accompanying their hymns with the thump and slide of heavy clothes irons. One especially weighty iron was known as a ‘self-heater’ because it had a hollow interior designed to hold hell-hot coals. Perhaps I imagined this, but the washerwomen seemed to favour hymns about sins being washed white as snow – something most Jamaicans had never witnessed first-hand – and the ironing women seemed to like hymns that lamented our trespasses and sins and the consequent fear of hell. I like to think that the island was girdled round by a kind of eremitical domestic holiness when those women sang.
On the streets of Kingston, preachers, often from Revivalist or Pocomania groups formed from the syncretisation of African and European religions, would rock out spirited versions of Christian hymns that married, as one of our philosophers Rex Nettleford said, the melodies of Europe with the rhythms of Africa. Salvation Army brass bands with their booming kettle drums contributed stirring renditions of hymns as they marched out from the Bramwell Booth Memorial Hall onto the streets of the city, there to lift up the fallen and convert the wayward.
Hymns were sung at political gatherings. ‘There Were Ninety and Nine’ was raised at every meeting of the People’s National Party, because it was the favourite hymn of Norman Washington Manley, often called the father of modern Jamaica. Jamaicans call this hymn and others like it ‘sankeys’ after the powerful revival-style hymns performed by the great American Evangelist and baritone Ira D. Sankey.
Christian hymns were also routinely repurposed by Rastafarians, a religious sect who regard their main mission as the decolonisation of the minds of African-Jamaicans; so, a sankey like ‘If you only knew the Blessing that Salvation brings’, when sung at a Rastafarian gathering or ‘reasoning’, would become ‘If you only knew the Blessing Rastafari brings’. Performed in a hypnotic chanting style and underscored by powerful explosive drumming, such hymns became anthems of resistance, especially when delivered in the thunderous basso profundo of the great Rastafarian elder Mortimo Planno, who was Bob Marley’s spiritual advisor.
But my mother and her people were Anglicans – or, as she preferred to say, they belonged to the ‘Church of England’. Her father David, in addition to being a village lawyer, was the catechist in the local Anglican church, and so my mother and her people all grew up being entirely comfortable with the language of the Book of Common Prayer, and very familiar with the poetry of the hymns written by some of the finest poets in the English language.
My mother relied on hymns to get her through the daily rounds and numerous common tasks involved in raising nine children on very little money. She would sing these hymns in a funny out-of-breath style, opting to hum some lines low under her breath as if internalising their deeper meaning, and singing others out loud, offering them up for all to hear in bursts of lamentation, praise, petition or thanksgiving. Ironically, one of her favourite hymns, ‘Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise’, was written in 1867 not by an Anglican but by a Scottish Methodist minister, Reverend W. Chalmers Smith, and it has become my favourite hymn.
I love and admire ‘Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise’ mainly because it is a triumph of a praise song that uses words to describe the indescribable; something to which any hard-grafting poet can relate. It does so in what the English moral philosopher Mary Warnock calls ‘beautiful unordinary language’, the only language fitting to describe God who cannot be seen through mortal eyes; who is immortal, most wise, most blessed and most glorious; and above all, most worthy of the ultimate honorific: ‘The Ancient of Days’, who is almighty and victorious and whose great name we praise.
When I was an art student I always used to pause as I sang that opening verse and picture William Blake’s fiery rendering of Urizen setting a compass to the earth; but some time ago something in me shifted, and now when I sing that line I see instead my mother, her hair gone completely white, contained in that bright circle of Blake’s making, and she is measuring yards of richly brocaded fabric with her worn dressmaking tape measure.
I love, just love, what happens in the second verse of this hymn, how one of the loveliest surprises I know of in all of writing occurs. The Immortal, Invisible, who does not rest or make haste, is described as ‘Silent as LIGHT’. Not night, but light. Lovely silent light which is invoked in every verse except verse number three. And then the old adage ‘Waste not, want not’ becomes a divine attribute of a mighty God, who does not waste nor want. Throughout this hymn, there are graceful gestures connecting the Divine to the daily in lovely numinous hints and gestures.
I sang this hymn at least a hundred times at morning assembly during the years I attended school in Jamaica. I have sung it
in churches in Ann Arbor, Michigan and in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada, and at least once in Durham Cathedral in England. My husband, Ted Chamberlin, and I chose it as the hymn for our wedding, so it has a very special place in my worship life, but these days it seems to have taken on even greater significance as I watch the news and I find myself turning to the lines:
Thy justice like mountains high soaring above
Thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love.
These words reassure me that no matter how much injustice there is in the world there is an ultimate source of justice, one that can only be measured by the heights of mountains. I am reassured, too, that there is a supply of goodness and love, which comes down from the clouds like rain or snow and, because this hymn is powered by the unordinary, this cloud-source of goodness and love paradoxically flows like a fountain.
These days, as I watch the news I feel the need to remind myself of the constant nature of the divine, that ‘nought changeth’, even as we mortals blossom and flourish as leaves on a tree, and then, without a doubt, wither and perish. In the original version of this hymn, the penultimate verse contains these lines, which were changed (by the Wesleys?):
But of all thy rich graces this grace, Lord, impart
Take the veil from our faces, the vile from our hearts.
I wish they had kept those words; for the graceful turn of veil into vile – a hard, but so honest word which resonates with those of us who are painfully aware that we often are, as the Book of Common Prayer says, ‘Most miserable offenders.’
But mostly this is my favourite hymn because it almost succeeds in describing what no one can ever fully describe: the greatest of all mysteries that is veiled in silent light.
11
My painted skirt like a scenic 78
LYING AWAKE in bed in the room I share with my two sisters, who are both asleep, I play the game I have invented called ‘Take control of the deejay over at the Loyal Levi Memorial Hall’.
The Loyal Levi Memorial Hall was a school by day – Rochdale College run by Mr Tingling and Miss Burton – a Lodge Hall by night, and a dance hall on weekends and public holidays. All over the city of Kingston there used to be such multipurpose halls, and all over the city such places were filled with dance fans come Saturday night.
I take control of the deejay from the comfort and safety of my bed because I am not old enough to go dancing, but I have done this before on other Saturday nights, I know what to do. I whisper into the dark: ‘Alright now, play “Sea Cruise” by Frankie Ford.’
There is a pause as my command skips over several sets of rooftops then drops down and penetrates into the mind of the deejay. Then there is the scratching sound of the needle on the broad-faced 78 rpm record followed by a musical churning as a love boat engine stirs up the waters of rhythm.
Once I get the attention of the deejay, he often plays what I tell him for up to seven or eight songs in a row. So, after Frankie Ford sails away, I command, command Professor Longhair of New Orleans to plead: ‘Baby, Let Me Hold Your Hand’.
And after that I want, no I need, I must and am bound to hear Huey ‘Piano’ Smith tell how he has ‘High Blood Pressure’. That one is my favourite.
I love it so much that I cannot stay in my bed, so I project myself through the window and go flying over the rooftops where I hover, O yeah, and then land feet first as a ‘Bony Maroni’ dancing girl in the midst of a crowded dance floor.
I am wearing five yards of swing skirt. A hand-painted skirt, covered with scenes of Jamaica skilfully rendered by some gifted local artist. Around the hem of my skirt, cobalt-blue waves lap at calico white sands. The Blue Mountains peak near my waist. Dunn’s River Falls cascades from my left hip, a scarlet hibiscus blooms over my navel and streamer-tailed humming birds hover around my knees. Up my right thigh rises a tall and stately coconut tree. My blouse is allamanda-yellow, it has a standing-collar and is sleeveless. My fabulous outfit is completed by brand new size five ackee-seed black ballet shoes.
I have come to dance. I can spin and spin and execute that cute shuffle when I complete the whirling circle that gives me the needed momentum to push off and spin again.
Dancing girls like me spin from when the music starts till it ends. My dancing partner’s function is solely to push me gently out and pull me in again, then to grasp me suddenly, fiercely around my waist to remind me that I do not dance alone. Every time I spin, the five yards of my skirt float out till I look like a scenic 78 record spinning.
And I instruct the deejay: play Jamaican music now. Strictly yard. Play ‘Boogie Rock’ by Laurel Aitken. Let my people’s voices ride the soundwaves right there alongside Jim Reeves and Marty Robbins, Frankie Laine and Patti Page.
May I pause a minute here to say that I never did like Patti Page’s water cracker singing? That I myself would not give her even a ha’penny for that doggie in the window?
Anyway, I tell the deejay, play ‘Little Vilma’ by the Blues Busters. Lloydie and Boasie, those two fine Black princes come from Montego Bay, with their strong singing and their flawless harmonising. Play them, Mr Deejay!
Play Wilfred Jackie Edwards – what a man smooth! Play ‘Tell Me Darling’ and play Keith and Enid, who are worried, ‘Worried Over You’.
Play ‘Muriel’ by Alton and Eddy. Strictly local, this. Play what I tell you.
And after this grand sweep of lyrical nationalism please play for me the fabulous singing ladies, the ones whose voices I’ll want to conjure when I come one day to accept that I am a poet.
Mr Deejay please play LaVern Baker singing her praise song to that most able of men, ‘Jim Dandy’.
Play Sarah Vaughan, of the wondrous voice and the gorgeous slipper satin evening gowns, make her sing me a ‘Lullaby of Birdland’.
Play enchantress Dinah Washington, let her spirit guide me through the isle of joy that is Manhattan.
And play any song by the high priestess Nina Simone. For when I come to write, if I can write like Nina sings… Oh, if I could only write like Nina sings ‘Little Girl Blue’.
Play for me those ladies with voices, coloratura like Myers rum and strong Machado tobacco, mysterious as the insides of nightclubs named Blue Note and Smoky Places.
Then play Ella of the crystalline clean baptismal soulrinse singing.
This is how I play the game until I fall asleep to Dakota Staton crooning about how it all started at The Late Late Show.
12
The Caribbean imaginary, for Ifeona Fulani
THE POEM ‘Guinea Woman’ (p.30) was born out of a strong need to honour my maternal great grandmother who would have been a small child when slavery was abolished in 1838.
All I knew of her when I wrote the poem was that she was very dark-skinned, and that people called her a Guinea woman because of the small warts across the top of her cheeks. I also knew that she had had my mother’s mother with an Irish man, and that later in her life she married a man of African descent. That was almost all I knew about her then. Most of the poem is therefore my imagining.
There were no family photographs of her. There were no archives to visit, no ancestry dot.com that kept records of the lives of people like my great grandmother, and so I learnt early in my life as a writer that if I wanted to write about my people I had to learn to listen carefully to family stories then imagine, and constantly reimagine those stories. And that is because, in the Caribbean, the centre will not, does not, and looks like it might not ever, hold. A Caribbean writer therefore has to take what is available even if much has been lost, and give it a presence, a reality through their imagination.
All writers do this, but Caribbean writers face formidable or particular challenges because of the ways in which slavery, and then colonialism, erased or distorted so much of our lives that we have had to learn to write ourselves into the story in any way we can.
‘Quest’
At aged twelve, six days
into the start of a year
this girl was
seated
in a whitewashed classroom
dreaming herself outdoors
and up Lignum vitae trees
and heard a teacher read:
‘A cold coming we had of it’
and just so went on a journey
with men whose names
or what they were in search of
never revealed.
She only recalls that when
a prefect rang the lunch bell
she was wrenched from the ride
with the men on a quest.
And that she tested on her tongue
the words refractory
and silken as adjectives for herself,
as hints for her own journey:
Girl exited room with vaulted ceiling, disoriented.
The feeling of being lost is still very much part of all our experience and I never thought I’d live to say this, but it’s not all bad, and it has a history that goes back well before our modern times.
The word ‘disoriented’, which we often use to describe how we feel when we’re not sure where we are, was first coined centuries ago to describe the experience of venturing far from a centre of certainties.
For medieval Christian, Jewish and Islamic sailors who went out from the Mediterranean onto the Atlantic Ocean, that centre was in the east, the Orient, where they all identified their spiritual and their secular home. If they ventured too far into the western sea – which they often did – it was said that they would become ‘dis-oriented’, alienated from their home.
Being disoriented has negative connotations for many of us, and especially for those in the Caribbean who feel far from their ancestral home in Africa or India; but on the positive side it is nothing more – or less – than not being sure about things and being surprised by new things, and that is what Caribbean literature has often taken as its mandate, making a virtue out of necessity.
Redemption Ground Page 6
