The pharaohs of rice and indigo, the conniving

Caesars of cotton,



what were we to them?

Profitable: able



bodies from Barbados

and the Windward Coast,



the Rice Coast,

our souls ramshackle,



less than a rooster’s

or a rock’s.



And yet, in painstaking fields,

in joyous praise houses,



our tenacious “Go Down, Moses,”

our stirring, rallying



“In the beauty of the lilies

Christ was born across the sea . . .”



might have served as proof

to those zealous Southern despots



that we possessed

some quilt scrap of God.



Go tell those greed-swayed

kings of sugar, those implacable



princes of tobacco,

how we garnered freedom



in our hardscrabble dreams,

sang it as sweat-drenched,



unshakable hallelujah,

whispered it as healing salve



to allay the defiling

stripes on our backs.



Unstinting overseer,

iron-eyed Caesar,



who better to define freedom

than a slave?