#eric roach

I AM THE ARCHIPELAGO . I am the archipelago hope Would mould into dominion; each hot green island Buffeted, broken by the press of tides And all the tales come mocking me Out of the slave plantations where I grubbed Yam and cane; where heat and hate sprawled down Among the cane – my sister sired without Love or law. In that gross bed was bred The third estate of colour. And now My language, history and my names are dead And buried with my tribal soul. And now I drown in the groundswell of poverty No love will quell. I am the shanty town, Banana, sugarcane and cotton man; Economies are soldered with my sweat Here, everywhere; in hate’s dominion; In Congo, Kenya, in free, unfree America. ....

(1957)

“Roach – sometimes called the “Black Yeats”– was one in a long line of poets for whom imitation and allusion are, in fact, blatant acts of rebellion. He also saw himself as key to the process of forming a West Indian Federation, a political union which he felt required a new poetry. Though that union never came to pass, Roach’s work still serves to engage key aspects of Caribbean identity.”

Watching my wisp of smoke I know where our dreams go. I know how spirit builds Pylon and pyramid Needling receding heaven; How soul the arrower, Burster of horizons Goes out like hawk and eagle. Through the star-cluttered night I go where my dreams go.

Come dawn, come sun, some cloud, Bird-talk, cock-crow, dog-bark; Man slipping in from sleep As from another journey Into the inn of day; Earth turning from nocturne To morning rhapsody; My mother island catching At my heart and feet; I go where my blood goes.

I go where my love goes; Where the salt sea sprays Her salt into the blood; Where my little river Runs rhythms out to sea; Where the green hill's tower Stands against the sky; Where in fertile valleys Grand, green fields of corn Preach of splendid harvests.

Here in my huddled village Blood pulses into blood; Kinsman halloos kinsman; Deep-bossomed women gossip From dooryard into dooryard And children scamper barefoot. Ah, there the heart-gold goes Slender as the young palm, Comelier than Sheba Golden in young sun.

                                asses bray, goats bleat

                                monkey’s jabber their unintelligible

                                language; parrots, macaws

                                shatter the air, squawking inanities;

                                turkeys gabble in drummed rhythms

                                preening assumed plumage;

                                the city’s sweating in the gathering garbage.

  We lost a continent, our rivers dried up;

legends died at our ancestral roots

where hardiest horsemen, spearmen, bowmen

raged and impis sneered at death.

The clown’s ascendant here: old wisdom’s

tumbled from his rope of reason down on

our witless gaping faces-

the tribal face one leering Comus mask

sweating in the city’s teeming garbage.

                                  bang tambourines

                                grapple with guitars and saxophones,

                                rattle hysteria till the town

                                yells bedlam; hovel, backyard

                                and slum shriek in delirium,

                                and the rum-drunk bacchanal

                                of folly, fear, frustration, lust,

                                malice and hatred roars in the streets

                                of sweating obscenity and reeking garbage.

  Choruses of bawdy calypsos

obscene as carrion crows

darken the sunlight with cacophonies

that desecrate all that harmony

the serpent’s cunning taught us.

All art and grace and fine delight

is drowned in frenzy of the carnival

that steeps the city in lust, sweat and garbage.