Current Issue
A Reminiscence from the Archives:
Vol. 12, No. 48, Pages 245–248 (January–June 1969)
A Public Address from the Archives:
Vol. 13, No. 53, Pages 3–9 (July–December 1971)
(The Graduation Address delivered at the U.W.I., Cave Hill, Barbados,
on 5th February, 1971.)
Dance can be the most sophisticated articulation of the human body as it moves through space and time.
translations from the Spanish by Thomás Rothe
A few precise words
drain simple truth into a palm basket
and inhale rumors, the clearest passion for language.
Facing the sea, Caliban lowers his head
translation from the Spanish by Thomás Rothe
My mother squinted her wayward eyes,
exhaling a cloud of blood,
when they rejected her
from the Havana Normal School for Teachers,
one day,
translation from the Spanish by Thomás Rothe
For we went, changing countries more often than our shoes
Bertolt Brecht
I am eight years old.
I was born in Guinea, like my parents.
A Conference Report from the Archives:
Vol. 12, No. 48, Pages 233–236 (January–June 1969)
A Poem from the Archives:
Vol. 8, No. 31, Pages 163–164 (July–December 1960)
Our epics begin to form.
I know the great stickfight is one: stone pictures have been
carved of it;
“your death is like our friendship beginning over” – Derek Walcott
you would love Patrick St. Eloi, his
sweet zouk swing, St. Eloi, gone
like you, beyond long nights with Alwin and friends, loud laughs, Marley,
1.
Late-life steps around multiplying tombstones
with familiar names, fading inscriptions of memory,
for Anson Gonzalez
Hey Anson, w’happen’? I hear you gone an dead!
That’s a dramatic move, boy. No comin’ back from that!
An’ me here mekin’ foolishness again.
I back on the island—well in truth is a different island
for Myrna, who told me the story
Dorcas! If is suck you suck your thumb
one more time I going wash it
in Dead-water from Auntie coffin,
you hear?! Dorcas scared too bad,
George Headley—THE George Headley.
The man the papers called “The Black Bradman”
(though in Jamaica, of course, they dubbed
the great Australian just “The White Headley”….)
Anyway, I saw him bat once, and at Sabina Park!
for Fred D’Aguiar
Muhammad Ali had to beat the clay
out of Ernie Terrell, refusing
to move in for the kill until the big man
would acknowledge his new nam,
nomo, his self-proclaimed identity,
(To be spoken aloud, to the rhythm—after the first four lines—of an actual or
implied drum beat….
Rat-tat-tat/rata-tat-tat/rata-tat /rat-tat-tat—with occasional variation)
No one knew what he was doing:
discarding his branded T-shirt,
folding the legs of his pants,
measuring the distance, ground to sky.
It’s five and golden. The tide, fat
and swelling. Traffic is easy
like the Joker in the deck the gods
are playing. Behold, the patchwork
of tired metal and steel, floating
to its final kilometre, laden