for margaret walker (13)

reconciling the pride & the pain

for margaret walker

i want to frame their dreams into words;
their souls into notes. i want to catch their
sunshine laughter in a bowl; fling dark hands
to a darker sky
from “i want to write”

i felt my own pride rekindled as I scried
the bloody entralls of yr verse; when
i glimpsed the auguries made plain
in the patterns yr words made, i cried.
conscious of the struggle, then, to write
or die, my simple sanguine choice,
i chose to wield my wordswords high,
face death knell sounds; seize the night.
i rode the winds to nigeria to explore,
write thru’ her dense womblike jungles
& beaches made of sugary sands;
to seek & find a mythic self & more.
my feet tapped out sonnets as I walked
ibadan’s streets; evoked the voice of
jp clark. i saw her splash of rust & gold.
i thought of u & how u glibly talked
of palm jungles & stretches of a neverending
sea. i saw what u saw, tho’ i
doubt the one-room shacks & pudency
of yr old mobile poverty could ever
match the sordid living rot, the desolation
of africa’s poor, but I saw what u meant;
even felt the pride & pain, the towering
heights & the terribly tragic abrogation
of an ancient people brought so low –
i wrote sultans, emirs, obas & obongs,
obis, ochi’domas & tor tivs into my
poems; made them gratuitously glow
with historic dignity & authenticity.
but when i stood on yr fabled mountain
tops & looked down on the scenes below
i could not unsee for the life of me
the corruption, ethnic hatred & the same
soul killing poverty soiling that darkly
beautiful land, finishing what lugard
began, with no white man to blame.
& i learned from u, miss walker, how
to pawn the impact of my surroundings
for lyrical coin, for biblical chant &
experimental sonnets or every now
& then for free wrought lines that extol
or bemoan the plight of my people,
frame their pride & pain into my own
impassioned prosody & soothe my soul.

©Joseph McNair