this place is the home of my children

Nothing original today, today's post comes from the Radio 3 Friday Poem, which was Grenadan poet Merle Collins' "Seduction", about the black diaspora experience of "seductive dying" in the grey UK,  dreaming of the brightness of the Caribbean, but over twenty years increasingly getting used to, getting attached to, the new home, the place of her family:

Twenty years, she said,
in this cold confinement
and every winter I am packing
to leave   . . .

. . .  But that's changing
this place is the home of my children
so the picture is shifting again


And the phrase, to "linger longer", becomes a kind of lulling refrain. Even the British winters start to feel comfortably familiar. And yet the speaker's voice falls silent through this erosion of her heart's dreams. Does her silent endurance contribute in some way to the idealism of her sisters, maybe by building a steady platform, a confidence for others? Does it nevertheless harm the one who accepts her silence?

*

"Dream" and "speak" are political words. Here's most of the title poem from her first collection, Because the Dawn Breaks (1985):


Because the Dawn Breaks

We speak because
When the rain falls in the mountains
The river slowly swells
Comes tumbling down
Over boulders
Across roads
Crumbling bridges
that would hold their power
against its force
We speak because we dream

We speak for the same reason
that the thunder frightens the child
that the lightning startles the tree

We do not speak to defy your tenets . . .
or to tumble your towers of Babel . . .

We speak because we dream
because our dreams
are not sitting in pigpens
in any other body's backyard
not of catching crumbs from tables
not of crawling forever
along the everlasting ant-line
to veer away in quick detour
when the elephant's foot crashes down   . . .
. . . not of striving forever
to catch the image of your Gods
within our creation

[Source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00086495.1989.11829443?journalCode=rcbq20 .]

*

And one more poem, again with a few lines removed in order to respect copyright, but you can read the whole thing if you follow the link.


Multiculture Abroad


They want me to write a poem
a poem like the natives write
about sand and sea and sunshine
and exotica like that.

They want me to speak a poem
a poem like they say West Indians speak
about rice and peas and carnivals and mango trees
and multicultural things like that.

 . . .

They want me to write a poem
a poem that would prove how multi culture is
and it makes me think about living here and
writing there and migratory stuff like that


[Source: https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/multiculture-abroad/ .]

Merle Collins

[Image source: https://www.bigdrumnation.com/2020/01/26/grenada-at-46/ . A wide-ranging interview discussing Grenada's history and its future.]