Pebbles / Islands

Lyrics

Brathwaite's reading of these poems can be heard on SoundCloud, or by opening this annotation PebblesBut my island is a pebble. If you crack an egg, watching its black jagged grin, a glue of life exudes a sticky death. You cannot crack a pebble, it excludes death. Seeds will not take root on its cool sur- face. It is a duck's back of water. A knife will not snap it open. It will slay giants but never bear children. IslandsSo looking through a map of the islands, you see rocks, history's hot lies, rot- ting hulls, cannon wheels, the sun's slums: if you hate us. Jewels, if there is delight in your еyes. The light shimmers on watеr, the cunning coral keeps it blue. Looking through a map of the Antilles, you see how time has trapped its humble servants here. De- scendants of the slave do not lie in the lap of the more fortunate gods. The rat in the warehouse is as much king as the sugar he plunders. But if your eyes are kinder, you will observe butterflies how they fly higher and higher before their hope dries with endeavour and they fall among flies. Looking through a map of the islands, you see that history teaches that when hope splinters, when the pieces of broken glass lie in the sunlight, when only lust rules the night, when the dust is not swept out of the houses, when men make noises louder than the sea's voices; then the rope will never unravel its knots, the branding iron's travelling flame that teaches us pain, will never be extinguished. The islands' jewels: Saba, Barbuda, dry flat- tened Antigua, will remain rocks, dots, in the sky-blue frame of the map.