Prologue: Mother/Muse
This is a song for the genius child.
Sing it softly, for the song is wild.
— Langston Hughes, from “Genius Child”
AN ISSUE OF MERCY #1
Mercy, girl.
What the mother might have said, pointing
at the sun rising, what makes life possible.
Then, dripped the bowl of water,
reverent, into oblivious earth.
Was this prayer for her?
Respect for the dead or disappeared?
An act to please a genius child?
Her daughter would speak
of water, bowl, sun—
light arriving,
light gone—
sometime after the nice white lady
paid and named her for the slave ship.
Mercy: what the child called Phillis
would claim after that sea journey.
Journey.
Let’s call it that.
Let’s lie to each other.
Not early descent into madness.
Naked travail among filth and rats.
What got Phillis over that sea?
What kept a stolen daughter?
Perhaps it was mercy,
Dear Reader.
Mercy,
Dear Brethren.
Water, bowl, sun—
a mothering, God’s milky sound.
Morning shards, and a mother wondered
if her daughter forgot her real name,
refused to envision the rest:
baby teeth missing
and somebody wrapping her treasure
(barely) in a dirty carpet.
’Twas mercy.
You know the story—
how we’ve lied to each other.
Book: Before
And pleasing Gambia on my soul returns,
With native grace in Spring’s luxuriant reign,
Smiles the gay mead and Eden blooms again,
The various bower, the tuneful flowing stream,
The soft retreats, the lovers golden dream …
— Phillis Wheatley, from “PHILIS’S Reply to the Answer in our Last by the Gentleman in the Navy”
What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
— Countee Cullen, from “Heritage”
THE SMELTING OF IRON IN WEST AFRICA
c. Sometime in antiquity, date unknown
Utilitarian—
then,
at some point,
an embrace of beauty.
A glow:
the man waits,
a picture in his head.
He will claw
out the dream’s
tincture,
pour it into mold—
and in that dream,
he has met
the hyena laughing
about chains. The man
will pound metal
to forget that
grievous sound.
He will master
what was brought
from earth,
from viscera’s
need—
until his hands seize,
he will do this work,
and his son will do
the same,
and it will be written
upon the griot’s skull.
MOTHERING #1
Yaay, Someplace in the Gambia, c. 1753
after
the after-birth
is delivered
the mother stops
holding her breath
the mid-wife gives
what came before
her just-washed pain
her insanity pain
an undeserved pain
a God-given pain
oh oh oh pain
drum-talking pain
witnessing pain
Allah
a mother offers
You this gift
prays You find
it acceptable
her