31 Slavery and freedom poems

The shirt touches his neck and smooths over his back. It slides down his sides. It even goes down below his belt— down into his pants. Lucky shirt.

This song is not a language, Not a thing to be remembered, The field-holler tradition of Teeth and knees Cursing wind, A concert hall of   bloody hands Spilling the earth, Strangling dirt, Sledgehammer curses Of  men busted open. On Parchman Farm You could hear it coming Up through the trees, The hammering pulpit of Crooning men and sweat, The tender meat of palms Pulped like plums. Them men gulped down the Dawn dew air, Let it catch in their throats, Broke the sunrise up and Sang hymns like hexes: Be my woman gal, I’ll beeee your maaaaaaan... And the killing fields of  Mississippi Fizzled down to juke joints and The hothouse music of illegal clubs With thick women they loved outright and Played cards with and Gave bourbon to when their hands Didn’t hold sorrow like Pickaxes and the railroad was Just a railroad, A way to ride north if  you could Get your money right. Redbone gals with rosewater sweat, When they lifted their knees Sunflower County was a heaven They believed in. Stick to the promise, gal, that you maaaaaade meeeeee... Steady now, They turned back the clock on Their hard, hard hands, Let the memory of fresh linen and Ladies’ slips like gossamer Wings, a parade of  plump thighs, The juju thrust of  furious bones Spread like grease Across starched-white sheets, Midwife them out of ol’ Parchman Farm And back to the cockfights and gambling, Back when they had ambition, Back when they had a sweet woman To hold, her fat wrists Soft as butter, Limp as rain. When she walk, she reel and rock beeeeeehind Ain’t that enough to make a convict smiiiiiiiiile.

They came as Congo, Guinea, & Angola, feet tuned to rhythms of a thumb piano. They came to work fields of barley & flax, livestock, stone & slab, brick & mortar, to make wooden barrels, some going from slave to servant & half-freeman. They built tongue & groove— wedged into their place in New Amsterdam. Decades of seasons changed the city from Dutch to York, & dream-footed hard work rattled their bones. They danced Ashanti. They lived & died. Shrouded in cloth, in cedar & pine coffins, Trinity Church owned them in six & a half acres of sloping soil. Before speculators arrived grass & weeds overtook what was most easily forgotten, & tannery shops drained there. Did descendants & newcomers shoulder rock & heave loose gravel into the landfill before building crews came, their guitars & harmonicas chasing away ghosts at lunch break? Soon, footsteps of lower Manhattan strutted overhead, back & forth between old denials & new arrivals, going from major to minor pieties, always on the go. The click of heels the tap of a drum awaking the dead.

In Ocean's wide domains, Half buried in the sands, Lie skeletons in chains, With shackled feet and hands. Beyond the fall of dews, Deeper than plummet lies, Float ships, with all their crews, No more to sink nor rise. There the black Slave-ship swims, Freighted with human forms, Whose fettered, fleshless limbs Are not the sport of storms. These are the bones of Slaves; They gleam from the abyss; They cry, from yawning waves, "We are the Witnesses!" Within Earth's wide domains Are markets for men's lives; Their necks are galled with chains, Their wrists are cramped with gyves. Dead bodies, that the kite In deserts makes its prey; Murders, that with affright Scare school-boys from their play! All evil thoughts and deeds; Anger, and lust, and pride; The foulest, rankest weeds, That choke Life's groaning tide! These are the woes of Slaves; They glare from the abyss; They cry, from unknown graves, "We are the Witnesses!"

For Ruben Ahoueya Today in America people were bought and sold: five hundred for a "likely Negro wench." If someone at auction is worth her weight in gold, how much would she be worth by pound? By ounce? If I owned an unimaginable quantity of wealth, could I buy an iota of myself? How would I know which part belonged to me? If I owned part, could I set my part free? It must be worth something—maybe a lot— that my great-grandfather, they say, killed a lion. They say he was black, with muscles as hard as iron, that he wore a necklace of the claws of the lion he'd fought. How much do I hear, for his majesty in my blood? I auction myself. And I make the highest bid.

Did a slave song at a master’s bidding mark Tom while asleep in Charity's womb? The whole plantation would be called to sing and dance in Master Epps’ large parlor room— after work sprung from dawn and dragged past dusk, after children auctioned to parts unknown, after funerals and whippings. Thus was the whim of the patriarch. No groans allowed, just high steppin’ celebration, grins all around, gritted or sincere. Charity threw feet, hips, arms into motion to please the tyrant piano. Was it here Tom learned how music can prove the master? While he spun in a womb of slavish laughter?

“what, to the american slave, is your 4th of july?” —frederick douglass i.  august 1619 arrived in a boat, named and unnamed, twenty, pirated away from a portuguese slaver, traded for victuals. drowned in this land of fresh, volatile clearings and folk with skin like melted cowrie shells. soon shedding servitude. soon reaping talents sown on african soil. after indenture, christians, colonists. not english, but not yet not-white. antoney and isabella, whose marriage stretched the short shadows of america’s early afternoon into the dusky reaches of evening, whose conjugal coitus spent first the choice coin of africa on rough virginian citizenship, baptized their son, william, into the church of england. ii.  december 1638 fear must have shuddered into boston on the backs of true believers — men and women of an unadorned god — deep in the heavy black fabric of their coats and dresses like a stench. black a mark of pride they wore as if branded, never dreaming they could take it off. envy anticipated their advent. glittered at them, settling in, from the knife blades of the massachusetts. seeped like low-pitched humming from the fur lining the natives’ warm blankets. but desire docked in 1638. in from the harbor flocked a people whose eyes sparked like stars, even near death. whose hair promised a mixture of cotton and river water and vines, a texture the fingers ached for. who wholly inhabited a skin the midnight color of grace that clarified the hue of the pilgrims’ woolen weeds. fear and envy claimed pride of place, put desire’s cargo to good use. iii.  march 1770 that night, crispus attucks dreamed. how he’d attacked his would-be master and fled in wild-eyed search of self- determination. discarded virginia on the run and ran out of breath in salt-scented boston. found there, if not freedom, fearlessness. a belief in himself that rocked things with the uncontrolled power of the muscular atlantic, power to cradle, to capsize. awoke angry again at the planter who’d taken him for a mule or a machine. had shouldered a chip the size of concord by the time the redcoat dared to dare him. died wishing he’d amassed such revolutionary ire in virginia. died dreaming great britain was the enemy. iv.  july 4th: last but not least 17-, 18-, 19-76 and still this celebration’s shamed with gunpowder and words that lie like martyrs in cold blood. africa’s descendents, planting here year after year the seeds of labor, sweating bullets in this nation’s warts, have harvested the rope, the rape, the ghetto, the cell, the fire, the flood, and the blame for you-name-it. so today black folks barbeque ribs and smother the echoes of billie’s strange song in sauces. drink gin. gladly holiday to heckle speeches on tv. pretend to parade. turn out in droves for distant detonations, chaos, controlled as always, but directed away from us tonight. stare into the mirror of the sky at our growing reflection, boggled by how america gawks at the passing pinpoints of flame, but overlooks the vast, ebony palm giving them shape.

The sale began—young girls were there, Defenseless in their wretchedness, Whose stifled sobs of deep despair Revealed their anguish and distress. And mothers stood, with streaming eyes, And saw their dearest children sold; Unheeded rose their bitter cries, While tyrants bartered them for gold. And woman, with her love and truth— For these in sable forms may dwell— Gazed on the husband of her youth, With anguish none may paint or tell. And men, whose sole crime was their hue, The impress of their Maker’s hand, And frail and shrinking children too, Were gathered in that mournful band. Ye who have laid your loved to rest, And wept above their lifeless clay, Know not the anguish of that breast, Whose loved are rudely torn away. Ye may not know how desolate Are bosoms rudely forced to part, And how a dull and heavy weight Will press the life-drops from the heart.

Heard you that shriek? It rose So wildly on the air, It seem’d as if a burden’d heart Was breaking in despair. Saw you those hands so sadly clasped— The bowed and feeble head— The shuddering of that fragile form— That look of grief and dread? Saw you the sad, imploring eye? Its every glance was pain, As if a storm of agony Were sweeping through the brain. She is a mother pale with fear, Her boy clings to her side, And in her kyrtle vainly tries His trembling form to hide. He is not hers, although she bore For him a mother’s pains; He is not hers, although her blood Is coursing through his veins! He is not hers, for cruel hands May rudely tear apart The only wreath of household love That binds her breaking heart. His love has been a joyous light That o’er her pathway smiled, A fountain gushing ever new, Amid life’s desert wild. His lightest word has been a tone Of music round her heart, Their lives a streamlet blent in one— Oh, Father! must they part? They tear him from her circling arms, Her last and fond embrace. Oh! never more may her sad eyes Gaze on his mournful face. No marvel, then, these bitter shrieks Disturb the listening air: She is a mother, and her heart Is breaking in despair.

To begin with, the slaves had to wash themselves well, and the men who had beards had to shave them off; the men were then given a new suit each, cheap but clean, and a hat, shirt, and shoes; and the women were each given a frock of calico and a handkerchief to tie about their heads. They were then led by the man selling them into a large room; the men placed on one side, the women at the other; the tallest at the head of each row and then the next in size and so on to the shortest. Many called to look at the slaves for sale and the seller kept talking about their qualities; made them hold up their heads and walk about briskly; and those who might buy had them open their mouths to look at their teeth, and felt their arms and bodies, just as they might a horse for sale; and asked each what they could do. Sometimes a man or woman would be taken to a small house in the yard, to be stripped and looked at carefully: if they had the scars of whips on their backs that would show they had been troublesome. During the day a number of sales were made; and a planter from Baton Rouge bought Eliza’s little son. Before that the boy had to jump and run across the floor to show his activity. But all the time the trade was going on, his mother was crying and wringing her hands and kept begging the man who was thinking of buying the boy not to buy him unless he bought her, too, and her little daughter: and Eliza kept saying that if he did she would be “the most faithful slave that ever lived.” But the man from Baton Rouge said he could not afford to buy her, and then she began to cry aloud in her grief. The man selling the slaves turned on her, his whip lifted, and told her to stop her noise: if she would not stop her “sniveling” he would take her into the yard and give her a hundred lashes. She tried to wipe away her tears but could not and said she wanted to be with her children and kept begging the man selling the slaves and the man from Baton Rouge— who by that time had bought her son— not to separate the three of them, mother, son, and daughter; and over and over again kept saying how faithful and obedient she would be and how hard she would work day and night. But the man from Baton Rouge said again he could not buy mother and son, let alone the three, and that only the boy must go with him. Then Eliza ran to her son, hugged him and kissed him again and again and her tears kept falling on his face. The man selling the slaves kept cursing her and called her a blubbering, howling wench and ordered her back to her place in line and to behave herself or he would give her something really to cry about.