Inspired by Christian Campbell, a celebration of the work and mind and art of the man I claim as the greatest Caribbean poet, Kamau Brathwaite. Here’s one of my favourites.

Legba

1

Today god came to church
like a lame old man on a crutch.

 He had fought in the last war
and has ribbons to show for

 it; knows Burma, Malaya and has been
to Singapore; gets a small pension

but apart from that
not very much attention.

His children eat dirt,
are pot-

bellied, knobble-
kneed sticks down

to their ball-
bearing ankles; 

the drifting sand
ruins their eyes; 

they go to school to the head-
master's cries,

read a black-
board of words, angles,

lies;
they fall 

over their examinations.
It is a fence that surrounds them.

 Those that are brown
enough, hobble

into a maimed world of banks, books, insurance, business.
There is not

much thanks from the rest of the hot
population.

2

And black black black
the black birds clack
in the shak shak tree

the slack
wing'd gaulin swings
through the fishnet air;

the pear
tree ripens, queen of the ring-
ing brambles; 

the jack 
bird sings, dream-
ing of jewels, eyes,

shell-less worms; the
sugar-cane screams
swinging under the steel

 cutlass;
bless us bless us
cries the shorn rain

cut from its thunder,
sting-
ing the cactus;

the drought
tickles the root
of the clammy-

cherry tree; doubt
ripples the fruit
lakes, snap-

ping the bamboo,
crack-
ing the blue.

—from The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy