Dirt

Kwame Dawes

I got one part of it. Sell them watermelons and get me another part. Get Bernice to sell that piano and I’ll have the third part.
—August Wilson

We who gave, owned nothing,
learned the value of dirt, how
a man or a woman can stand
among the unruly growth,
look far into its limits,
a place of stone and entanglements,
and suddenly understand
the meaning of a name, a deed,
a currency of personhood.
Here, where we have labored
for another man’s gain, if it is fine
to own dirt and stone, it is
fine to have a plot where
a body may be planted to rot.
We who have built only
that which others have owned
learn the ritual of trees,
the rites of fruit picked
and eaten, the pleasures
of ownership. We who
have fled with sword
at our backs know the things
they have stolen from us, and we
will walk naked and filthy
into the open field knowing
only that this piece of dirt,
this expanse of nothing,
is the earnest of our faith
in the idea of tomorrow.
We will sell our bones
for a piece of dirt,
we will build new tribes
and plant new seeds
and bury our bones in our dirt.

From Duppy Conqueror: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2013 by Kwame Dawes. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.

For August Wilson No one quarrels here, no one has learned the yell of discontent—instead, here in Sumter we learn to grow silent, build a stone of resolve, learn to nod, learn to close in the flame of shame and anger in our hearts, learn to petrify it so, and the more we quiet our ire, the heavier the stone; this alchemy of concrete in the vein, the sludge of affront, until even that will calcify and the heart, at last, will stop, unassailable, unmovable, adamant. Find me a man who will stand on a blasted hill and shout, find me a woman who will break into shouts, who will let loose a river of lament, find the howl of the spirit, teach us the tongues of the angry so that our blood, my pulse—our hearts flow with the warm healing of anger. You, August, have carried in your belly every song of affront your characters have spoken, and maybe you waited too long to howl against the night, but each evening on some wooden stage, these men and women, learn to sing songs lost for centuries, learn the healing of talk, the calming of quarrel, the music of contention, and in this cacophonic chorus, we find the ritual of living.

Shook Foil

The whole earth is filled with the love of God.
     In the backwoods, the green light
is startled by blossoming white petals,
     soft pathways for the praying bird
dipping into the nectar, darting in starts
     among the tangle of bush and trees.
My giddy walk through this speckled grotto
     is drunk with the slow mugginess
of a reggae bassline, finding its melody
     in the mellow of the soft earth’s breath.
I find the narrow stream like a dog sniffing,
     and dip my sweaty feet in the cool.
While sitting in this womb of space
     the salad romantic in me constructs a poem. This is all I
           can muster
     before the clatter of schoolchildren
searching for the crooks of guava branches
     startles all with their expletives and howls;
the trailing snot-faced child wailing perpetual—
     with ritual pauses for breath and pity.
In their wake I find the silver innards of discarded
      cigarette boxes, the anemic pale of tossed
condoms, the smashed brown sparkle of Red Stripe
     bottles, a mélange of bones and rotting fruit,
there in the sudden white light of noon.

      How quickly the grandeur fades into a poem,
how easily everything of reverie starts to crumble.
     I walk from the stream. Within seconds
sweat soaks my neck and back; stones clog my shoes,
     flies prick my flaming face and ears,
bramble draws thin lines of blood on my arms.
     There is a surfeit of love hidden here;
at least this is the way faith asserts itself.
     I emerge from the valley of contradictions,
my heart beating with the effort, and stand looking
     over the banking, far into Kingston Harbor
and the blue into gray of the Caribbean Sea.
     I dream up a conceit for this journey
and with remarkable snugness it fits;
     this reggae sound: the bluesy mellow
of a stroll on soft, fecund earth, battling the crack
     of the cross-stick; the scratch of guitar,
the electronic manipulation of digital sound,
     and the plaintive wail of the grating voice.
With my eyes closed, I am drunk with the mellow,
     swimming, swimming among the green of better days;
and I rise from the pool of sound, slippery with
     the warm cling of music on my skin,
and enter the drier staleness of the road
     that leads to the waiting city of fluorescent lights.

Kwame Dawes

1997

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Dirt

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