Ota Benga at Edenkraal

Yusef Komunyakaa - 1947-

Maybe it was hog-killing time
when he arrived in Lynchburg,
Virginia, several lifetimes behind him,

the old smell of the monkey house
at the New York Zoological Gardens
receding, a broken memory left.

Not sure of the paths & turns
     taken, woozy in a swarm of hues,
       he stood in Anne Spencer’s garden

surrounding the clapboard house,
   but when she spoke he came back
     to himself. The poet had juba

in her voice, & never called him
Artiba, Bengal, Autobank, or
Otto Bingo. Her beds of tiger

lilies, sweet peas, & snapdragons
disarmed him. Her fine drawl
summoned rivers, trees, & boats,

in a distant land, & he could hear
a drum underneath these voices
near the forest. He never spoke

of the St. Louis World’s Fair
or the Bronx Zoo. The boys
crowded around him for stories

about the Congo, & he told them
about hunting “big, big” elephants,
& then showed them the secret

of stealing honey from the bees
with bare hands, how to spear fish
& snare the brown mourning dove.

One night he sat in the hayloft,
singing, “I believe I’ll go home.
Lordy, won’t you help me?”

A hoot owl called to the moon
hemmed in a blackberry thicket,
& he bowed to the shine of the gun.

I made love to you, & it loomed there. We sat on the small veranda of the cottage, & listened hours to the sea talk. I didn't have to look up to see if it was still there. For days, it followed us along polluted beaches where the boys herded cows & the girls danced for the boys, to the moneychanger, & then to the marketplace. It went away when the ghost of my mother found me sitting beneath a palm, but it was in the van with us on a road trip to the country as we zoomed past thatch houses. It was definitely there when a few dollars exchanged hands & we were hurried through customs, past the guards. I was standing in the airport in Amsterdam, sipping a glass of red wine, half lost in Van Gogh's swarm of colors, & it was there, brooding in a corner. I walked into the public toilet, thinking of W.E.B. buried in a mausoleum, & all his books & papers going to dust, & there it was, in that private moment, the same image: obscene because it was built to endure time, stronger than their houses & altars. The seeds of melon. The seeds of okra in trade winds headed to a new world. I walked back into the throng of strangers, but it followed me. I could see the path slaves traveled, & I knew when they first saw it all their high gods knelt on the ground. Why did I taste salt water in my mouth? We stood in line for another plane, & when the plane rose over the city I knew it was there, crossing the Atlantic. Not a feeling, but a longing. I was in Accra again, gazing up at the vaulted cathedral ceiling of the compound. I could see the ships at dusk rising out of the lull of "Amazing Grace," cresting the waves. The governor stood on his balcony, holding a sword, pointing to a woman in the courtyard, saying, That one. Bring me that tall, ample wench. Enslaved hands dragged her to the center, then they threw buckets of water on her, but she tried to fight. They penned her to the ground. She was crying. They prodded her up the stairs. One step, & then another. Oh, yeah, she still had some fight in her, but the governor's power was absolute. He said, There's a tyranny of language in my fluted bones. There's a poetry on every page of the good book. There's God's work to be done in a forsaken land. There's a whole tribe in this one, but I'll break them before they're in the womb, before they're conceived, before they're even thought of. Come, up here, don't be afraid, up here to the governor's quarters, up here where laws are made. I haven't delivered the head of Pompey or John the Baptist on a big silver tray, but I own your past, present, & future. You're special. You're not like the others. Yes, I'll break you with fists & cat-o'-nine. I'll thoroughly break you, head to feet, but sister I'll break you most dearly with sweet words.

The water's wonderful there And the women aren't bad Neither when you look at them Twice, but the blame Lies in that glass from the tap For making me want to go back. I went looking for where they get It from but I got a ticket For speeding; and when I said I'm Mister Shine, a black ghost, Cop said that's too bad. Glow I was lost. But my sermon is about the water, How it's precious like family When you wanting something familiar. It made me happy-- It taste like baby's breath, Like dew. I never knew sweeter water. But I'm a spook's spook; I stole This story from a dead man's mouth. He was a preacher from Virginia Who before he expired said: Somewhere there's a well of sweet water. Somewhere in Ohio or maybe Carolina.

Poems

Ota Benga at Edenkraal

More by Yusef Komunyakaa

My Father's Love Letters (audio only)

The Smokehouse (audio only)

Cape Coast Castle

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Homing

poets.org

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Poems

Ota Benga at Edenkraal

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