The New Ships

Lyrics

Brathwaite's reading of this poem can be heard on SoundCloud or by opening this annotation The New Ships1Takoradi was hot. Green struggled through red as we landed. Laterite lanes drifted off into dust into silence. Mammies crowded with cloths, flowered and laughed; white teeth smooth voices like pebbles moved by the sea of their language. Akwaaba they smiled meaning welcome akwaaba they called aye kooo well have you walked have you journeyed welcome you who have come back a stranger after three hundred years welcome here is a stool for you; sit; do you remember? here is water dip wash your hands are you ready to eat? here is plantain here palm oil: red, staining the fingers; good for the heat, for the sweat. do you remember? 2I tossed my net but the net caught no fish I dipped a wish but the well was dry beware beware beware I travelled to a distant town I could not find my mother I could not find my father I could not hear the drum whose ancestor am I? I walked in the bush but my cut- lass cut no path; returned from the farm but could not hear my children laugh beware beware beware For now the long hot flint- locks sing with heat; fever of quick sales rot the branches of bone; blood brands the bird's full sails and trinkets sear my flesh. Whose brother, now, am I? could these soft huts have held me? wattle daubed on wall, straw-hatted roofs, seen my round or- dering, when kicked to life I cried to the harsh light around me? If you should see someone coming this way send help, send help, send help for I am up to my eyes in fear. 3And beware cried Akyere do not trust strangers. In their watery eyes I see dangers. Hooks jerk in their smiles, lurking capture; sticks from their stares are a dry beach of sand's pain, bleaching bones of despair, your life's fear. Do not trust strangers smell the danger: cassava cooked skin that the wind brings; their sin stretches like smoke, dis- appears in the white wind, but re- mains, re- mains to stain our truth with its stench; and when night comes, when night comes, chok- ing my eyes' throat, the fire is drenched in fright's phantoms: sasabonsam of darkness where even the deep- est drum trembles. So beware cried Akyere beware the clear eyes, the near ships, the cast lines, sweet cargoes of promises beware the steer'd smiles, their teeth's rock, the white fathoms. 4But our women, pepper- eyed, glad to see strangers, will- ing to sell gold, fleshes' thighs for tin trinkets, thin cloth stamped with flowers; our elders, kola-nut- chewing, showing gums stained, tarnished with drugs' greed, love of profit, for- got the grey gods of anger who warned against smiling hands groping for markets, not wor- ship; for- got the long wars brought us here in the gossip of who pleases Portuguese best, sneezes snuff.