The Forest

Lyrics

Brathwaite's reading of this poem can be heard on SoundCloud or by opening this annotation The Forest1Like walls the forest stops us. Over the ford at Yeji it was waiting: tangled squat mahogany out- riders and then the dense, the dark green tops, bright shining standing trunks: wawa, dahoma, esa and odum; the doom of the thick stretching green. Leaves gathered darkness; no pathway showed the way. The trunks grew tall and taller, dark and darker; earth now damp, fern cool, moss soft. We hacked our way through root and tendril, climber shoot and yellow clinger. This was the pistil journey in- to moistened gloom. Dews dripped, lights twink- led, crickets chirped and still the dark was silence, still the dark was home. We scorched, we raked, we settled; cleared path, cut clearing, burnt the dry rot out of withered wood to make this farm. And at night, so that no harm would come from dark still heavy on us, made this fire: fire- flies from sticks, from cinders; and we sang: in praise of those who journey those who find the way those who clear the path those who go on before us to prepare the way. We sang of warmth and fires, bodies touching, eyes of embers, watching. Where are the open spaces now clear sky, the stars, horizons' distances? We sang of warmth and fires, bodies safe and touching. 2But the lips remember temples, gods and pharaohs, gold, silver ware; imagination rose on wide unfolded wings. But here in the dark, we rest: time to forget the kings; time to forget the gods. That fat man with the fire- light's grease that dances on his belly--- belly button bunged---is he the king or glutton? He lives on human blood and dies in human blood; our empire's past of stone and skulls demands it. And Ra, the sun god's gold, demanded blood to make it sacred. Time to forget these kings. Time to forget these gods. The jewelled sun Has splintered on these leaves. The moon- light rusts. Only the frogs wear jewels here; the cricket's chirp is emerald; the praying mantis' topaz pleases; and termites' tunnel eyes illuminate the dark. No sphinx eyes close and dream us of our destiny; the desert drifting certainties outside us. Here leaf eyes shift, twigs creak, buds flutter, the stick becomes a snake; uncertainties adrift within us. 3So praise the new eyes, leaves' butterflies, flies' sympathy; the dark trees understand. Raise the mantis face, my brother; mother tree, your rough bark mocks me but we understand. For night of leaves and leaves of stars and stars' winked darkness is a new world of discovered here; new world of time and time's uncertainty. 4So that with new warm arms the forest holds us. From this womb'd heaven comes the new curled god with goblin old man's grinning, flat face smiling, crouched like a frog with monkey hands and insect fingers. This we will carve and carry with our cooking pots, wood mud and wattle; symbol sickness fetish for our sickness. For man eats god, eats life, eats world, eats wickedness. This we now know, this we digest and hold; this gives us bone and sinews, saliva grease and sweat; this we can shit. And that no doubt will ever hit us, the worm's mischance defeat us, dark roots of time move in our way to trip us; look, we dance.