Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems

The poem:
(I did not write this.  Honestly!  But I will apologize
beforehand on behalf of the poet for any stretches that 
read a little too much like prose.  I would rewrite them
to fix it, but that would be wrong.)


  Middle Passage

 1.
 Jesus, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy:
        
       Sails, flashing to the wind like weapons,
       sharks following the moans the fever and the dying;
       horror the corposant and compass rose.

 Middle Passage:

            voyage through death 
                       to life upon these shores.

     "10 April 1800--
     Blacks rebellious.  Crew uneasy.  Our linguist says
     their moaning is a prayer for death,
     ours and their own.  Some try to starve themselves.
     Lost three this morning leaped with crazy laughter
     to the waiting sharks, sang as they went under."

 Desire, Adventure, Tartar, Ann:

       Standing to America, bringing home
       black gold, black ivory, black seed.

           Deep in the festering hold the father lies,
           of his bones New England pews are made,
           those are the altar lights that were his eyes.

 Jesus Saviour Pilot Me
 Over Life's Tempestuous Sea

 We pray that Thou wilt grant, O Lord,
 safe passage to our vessels bringing
 heathen souls unto Thy chastening.

 Jesus Saviour

        "8 bells.  I cannot sleep, for I am sick 
        with fear, but writing eases fear a little
        since still my eyes can see these words take shape
        upon the page & so I write, as one
        would turn to exorcism.  4 days scudding,
        but now the sea is calm again.  Misfortune
        follows in our wake like sharks (our grinning
        tutelary gods).  Which one of us
        has killed an Albatross?  A plague among
        our blacks--Ophthalmia:  blindness--& we
        have jettisoned the blind to no avail.
        It spreads, the terrifying sickness spreads.
        It's claws have scratched sight from the Capt.'s eyes
        & there is blindness in the fo'c'sle
        & we must sail 3 weeks before we come
        to port."

          What port awaits us, Davy Jones'
          or home?  I;ve heard of slavers drifting, drifting,
          playthings of wind and storm and chance, their crews
          gone blind, the jungle hatred
          crawling up on deck.

 Thou Who Walked On Galilee

          "Deponent further sayeth the Bella J
          left the Guinea Coast
          with cargo of five hundred blacks and odd
          for the barracoons of Florida:

          "That there was hardly room 'tween-decks for half
          the sweltering cattle stowed spoon-fashion there;
          that some went mad of thirst and tore their flesh
          and sucked the blood:

          "That Crew and Captain lusted with the comeliest 
          of the savage girls kept naked in the cabins;
          that there was one they called The Guinea Rose
          and they cast lots and fought to lie with her:

          "That when the Bo's'n piped all hands, the flames
          spreading from starboard already were beyond 
          control, the negroes howling and their chains
          entangled with the flames:

          "That the burning blacks could not be reached,
          that the Crew abandoned ship, 
          leaving their shrieking negresses behind.
          that the Captain perished drunken with the wenches:

          "Further Deponent sayeth not."

 Pilot Oh Pilot Me

II

 Aye, lad, and I have seen thos factories,
 Gambia, Rio Pongo, Calabar;
 have watched the artful mongos baiting traps
 of war wherein the victor and the vanquished

 Were caught as prizes for out barracoons.
 Have seen the nigger kings whose vanity
 and greed turned wild black hides of Fellatah,
 Mandingo, Ibo, Kru to gold for us.

 And their was one--King Anthracite we named him--
 fetish face beneath French parasols
 of brass and orange and velvet, impudent mouth
 whose cups were craven skulls of enemies:

 He'd honor us with drum and feast of conjo
 and palm-oik-glistnening wenches deft in love,
 and for tin crowns that shone with paste,
 red calico and German-silever trinkets.

 Would have the drums talk war and send
 his warriors to burn the sleeping villages
 and kill the sick and old and lead the young
 in coffles to our factories.

 Twenty years a trader, twenty years,
 for there was wealth aplenty to be harvested
 from thos black fields, and I'd be trading still
 but for the fevers melting down my bones.

III

 Shuttles in the rocking loom of history,
 the dar ships move, the dark ships move,
 their bright ironical names
 like jests of kindness on a murderer's mouth;
 plough through thrashing glister toward
 fata morgana's lucent melting shore,
 weave toward New World littorals that are 
 mirage and mythand actual shore.

  Voyage through death,
                       voyage whos chartings are unlove.

 A charnel stench, effluvium of living death
 spreads outward from the hold, 
 where the living and the dead, the horribly dying,
 lie interlocked, lie foul with blood and excrement.

        Deep om the festering hold thy father lies,
        the corpes of mercy rots with him,
        rats eat love's rotten gelid eyes.

        But, oh, the living look at you
        with human eyes whose suffering accuses you,
        whose hatred reaches through the swill of dark
        to strike you like a leper's claw.

        You cannot stare that hatred down 
        or chain the fear that stalks the watches
        and breathes on you its fetid scorching breath;
        cannot kill the deep immortal human wish, 
        the timeless will.
         
               "But for the storm that flung up barriers
               of wind and wave, The Armistad, senores,
               would have reached the port of Principe in two,
               three days at most;  but for the storm we should 
               have been prepared for what befell.
               Swift as the puma's leap it came.  There was 
               that interval of moonless calm filled only
               with the water's and the rigging's usual sounds,
               then sudden movement, blows and snarling cries
               and they had fallen on us with machete
               and marlinspike.  It was as though the very
               air, the night itself were striking us.    
               Exhausted by the rigors of the storm,       
               we were no match for them.  Our men went down
               before the murderous Africans.  Our loyal    
               Celestino ran from below with gun            
               and lantern and I saw, before the cane-
               knife's wounding flash, Cinquez,
               that surly brute who calls himself a prince,
               directing, urging on the ghastly work.
               He hacked the poor mulatto down, and then
               they turned on me.  The decks were slippery
               when daylight finally came.  It sickens me
               to think of what I saw, of how these apes
               threw overboard the butchered bodies of
               our men, true Christians all, like so much jetsam.
               Enough, enough.  The rest is quickly told:
               Cinquez was forced to spare the two of us
               you see to steer the ship to Africa,     
               and we like phantoms doomed to rove the sea
               voyaged east by day and west by night,
               deceiving them, hoping for rescue,
               prisoners on our own vessel, till  
               at length we drifted to the shores of this
               your land, America, where we were freed
               from our unspeakable misery.  Now we   
               demand, good sirs, the extradition of  
               Cinquez and his accomplices to La      
               Havana.  And it distresses us to know  
               that there are so many here who seem inclined
               to justify the mutiny of these blacks.       
               We find it paradoxical indeed           
               that you whose wealth, whose tree of liberty
               are rooted in the labor of your slaves
               should suffer the august John Quincy Adams
               to speak with so much passion of the right
               of chattel slaves to kill their lawful masters
               and with his Roman rhetoric weave a hero's    
               garland for Cinquez.  I tell you that         
               we are determined to return to Cuba           
               with our slaves and there see justice done.  Cinquez--
               or let us say 'the Prince'--Cinquez shall die."

 The deep immortal human wish,
 the timeless will:
            
           Cinquez it deathless primaveral image,
           life that transfigures many lives.

 Voyage through death
                     to life upon these shores.


   
 
Robert Hayden