The poems, hopefully, do that plus offer a prayer, a signpost for a new, more total way to exist, even as they acknowledge “I am a black poet / plain and simple. I don’t know if I was black before I was a poet / but I come from a people who have ways / of telling such things.” The poems are about gathering again, from wherever they might come, all those people.
Dear Prologue
Two bottles of rum and the Roaring Lion
The first calypso I can remember hearing, and very shortly thereafter knowing by heart, was by a calypsonian who was already a legend in the calypso world. The Mighty Sparrow was one of the few calypsonians whose appeal had moved beyond Trinidad and the rest of the English-speaking West Indies. He had performed in England and the United States and for many dignitaries. He was adept at both social commentary and party favorites; his pen could cut both ways. Sparrow’s songs illuminated—even when singing about women of ill repute—essential truths about colonial life. His wit and sarcasm were complicated by a ribald sense of humor and a daring sense of metaphor. The calypso I chose to memorize in this case could be argued to exhibit all these qualities. The chorus went:
Drunk and disorderly; always in custody
My friends and my family; all fed-up with me
Drunk and disorderly; every weekend I'm in the jail
Drunk and disorderly; nobody to stand my bail. . .
It was 1973. I was four years old.
My grandmother and mother were coheads of household; my grandmother’s penchant for stern discipline was itself legend. In this Puritan household there were many infractions one did not dream of committing, but somehow I have no recollection of being censored in my loud repeated rendition of this popular song. Even my grandmother must have understood the importance of the calypsonian as griot in our midst, even as she, like many others of her generation and social station, pursued class mobility through formal education and rigorous religious indoctrination. Sparrow represented a particular generation, however, maybe the first one to benefit from the carnival arts having been raised to a level of national art and discourse. He and Lord Kitchener were the titans of the form, and following closely after them, poets like Chalkdust, Shorty, Merchant, and a host of others were providing a new vanguard. In time we would come to know soca as an entirely separate branch of the music—but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
This group of musicians was standing on the shoulders of some old high priests. These were the calypsonians who broke ground, who were champions—locally famous saga boys whose sobriquets underscored their facility with both microphone and white-handled razor: the Growling Tiger, Attilah the Hun, the Mighty Terror, Lord Invader, and of course, the Roaring Lion. These were among the earliest proponents of the form, men whose songs defined kaiso, and who, by the time I was born, were no longer taking part in the competitions, which were central to the annual Carnival celebrations. These men had defined the form. They were respected and occasionally played on the radio, but their time was past. They were the subjects of great stories by our uncles and fathers of a time we could not conceive—yeah, it was the champion stick-fighters, panmen who would as soon put a cutlass on you as talk to you, masqueraders who perfected the dragon dance and the robber speech.
And so here I was, fourteen years after my first memorized number, picking up work at the Trinidad and Tobago annual singer-songwriter music festival, a weeklong series of competitions for local songwriters in several genres. I was one of about six back-up singers who had to learn several songs over the course of the week in support of these hopeful musicians. On the last night, the festival honored the Roaring Lion with a lifetime achievement award.
I have never seen the Roaring Lion anywhere not wearing a suit, a light-colored one—usually off-white or beige, impeccably ironed—and hat to match. I remember him as a tall, slender man who moved easily and, even past seventy years old (which he already was then), was improbably smooth with the ladies. When I say that calypso sang the consciousness of the nation, when I say that folks like the Lion were legend for what they taught us of ourselves, I mean to refer you forward to the first section’s epigraph, to Lion’s assertion that judge, doctor, lawyer, and bishop were all occupations beneath him—that instead he would be the principal of QRC, Queen’s Royal College, a boys’ high school in the capital city. This is significant for reasons other than we might imagine today in a world in which teachers are denigrated and education championed only for the eventual earning power it might give. Of the three major boys’ secondary schools in the city, QRC was the one traditionally seen as the black people’s school. A long tradition of academic rigor and respectful questioning prevailed, and the school produced many of the country’s most influential scholars, politicians, artists, and athletes. The first prime minister, Eric Williams; Nobel Prize winner Vidya Naipaul; historian and journalist C. L. R. James—the list is endless. I had recently graduated from that school and was fortunate not only to have gone there but to have known even then the importance of the legacy of men like the Roaring Lion. And the Lion knew the importance of a school like QRC.
Still, the Trinidadian ethos concerning its heroes is baffling. Maybe the country of 1.3 million is too spoiled with a relative overabundance of world-class achievers. Academic champions, Olympic champions, two Miss Universes, and two world boxing champs have all come from the small nation, and we rub shoulders on a daily basis with these heroes. We often ignore them. We take their achievements for granted.
And it is with this backdrop that on the last night of the festival, I’m leaving to go home, pulling out of a parking space, and the Roaring Lion, regally suited, with a giant trophy in his hand, is trying to flag down folks to get a lift home. I cannot believe my eyes. Lion wants a lift and people are not stopping.
I pull up next to the legend and ask him where he’d like to go. Before he gets into the car, he assures me that he only wants a drop downtown to the taxi stand, from where he’ll make his way home. My mother taught me well, so I’ll have none of it. I ask him where he lives, knowing full well that even if he said the other side of the island, I’d be driving him home. He says Mt. Lambert. It is completely out of my way, but I say, “Hop in. I’ll carry you home . . .”
The Lion says, “Thank you, young fella,” and as is my way, I speed off much too fast. Lion has other ideas though. Once we get off the street in front of the theater and turn onto French Street, the conversation goes like this:
whas your name sonny?
Roger . . .
you want a drink?
well I don’t have any money, sir. . .
I didn’t ask you if you have money, boy. I ask you if you want a drink.
I say no more. I pull up next to Hereford’s, right opposite Trinidad and Tobago Television station. We drank here throughout my high school life, and when home I still go here, often to find my Uncle Mikey on a barstool, whom I have to drive home, often at the begging request of the bar owner.
♦ ♦ ♦
There is a way you enter a room when you’ve learned the entry is important; when you know you can’t leave and come back in again; when you want to be respected at first glance; when you want to leave no doubt that to fuck with you is a terrible mistake; when it is clear you are a man with rank. Any old man with enough liquor in his history knows it, even if he doesn’t have it. Old men who’ve worked hard, with their hands, have it even when they don’t know it. If you have a scar or two, if you know the business and working ends of a blade, it is bequeathed to you. Old men also know it when