Dawn

Lyrics

Brathwaite's reading of this poem can be heard on SoundCloud, or by opening this annotation Dawn1Lips lips salt slick of the sea water tap of its time on the ground shore the pebbles of silence lap lap of my mother and the eyes of my father rising rising the sea in its splendour plentiful fishes crowds, brilliant multitudes of wet colour the pool ying cool in its green corner dolour of distances horizons sails fishermen's songs pails slop of their catches the dawn blinds, open eyes, hands groping for prayer flowers knowing the sun- light hump- backs out of the eye lands, my is- lands red clay mud of volcanoes bristled with jewels rot of word stone, water's opposition your lips face on my face cheek to my stone sheet, green energies, cuts rivers, delicate fingers, tongs of a sound, sudden blue flowings the street's avalanche of bicycle bells claxons, screams, flags over Kingston ... 2The piston engine dreams of a kerosene god; hell here is a black wick without whisper of flame; red flowerings of horsemen rise into chrysanthemum heat; the young know no older love than a fat-bottomed dissolute sister; the plates in the kitchen are cracked into green, ganjarene. Rut rut rut me you pig of pain, you mean anger, tapper of marrow, bone snapper; your face is my face, your lips suckle my parasites; sit still you bisexual cycler: passion of the bread broken, the east rising in its blood; what prayers will assuage these jewels my eyes, the laid-out islands, roses stripped naked in the dew? What prayers will reprieve the cold fever of the day- light, thin man, knocking at doors, smile sharpened by the rats, tin can of pisstilence, scruffulent scrubber, saviour of the harbour's sepulchres of filth. Lock me dead in your eye as the cock crows: red rain of urine falls slowly on the is- lands; the dump heaps sprout pain again and again: guer- rillas of green duck- ing under the twisted barb-wired night and the sun cunning cannon of flowers, swaying swaying: sip sop, sweet sop, sour sapodilla's eyes the eyes of the prawns in the basket, tickless in death, water's wristwatch; the wails coming up from the gullies, frog songs the mouth-organ drool of the snails' slow passage, discretion, through zones that the hummingbird's swiftness that is stillness, knows not, knows not; and the lourd hedgehog, following the mongoose and the mangrove trail, reaches the green pool lured by the birth pangs of bubbles the silt slow wet of the mosquito's malarial reaches 3Till the sun enters fine, enters fine, enters fin- ally its growing circle of splendour rising rising into the eyes of my father, the fat valley loads of my mother of water, lap- ping, lapping my ankles, lap- ping these shores with their silence: insistence of pure light, pure pouring of water that opens the eyes of my window And I see you, my wound- ed gift giver of sea spoken syllables: words salt on your lips on my lips ...