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;
It was near Rio Claro, between the champions of the batoniers,
The giant Mangamouche, hard bitter La Cour Harpe, the fighters.
The negro jardens with their jointed tambour bamboos, goat-
skinned, many coloured,
Beat the news of a major bataille bois days and days ahead,
honoured to be proclaimers.
Men came from seventy villages bare-foot or in donkey-carts
And their women carrying melons and coconuts to sell in the
hot afternoon;
And even three sunburnt Englishmen in white drill and brown
cork hats came!
When the last goat-skin drum faded to silence
All was very quiet around the fighting pit and the sun very
hot there on the charred ground.
Small boys in the surrounding plum and calabash trees watched
with flaming eyes;
These men in khaki shorts and belts of dogs’ teeth salted their
blood.
The wary beginning, the skillful work of the stick, sweet to the
eyes of the old men.
Then the heavier direct blows with their weight of knotty black
muscles.
They fought all morning with hard watchful eyes
And all afternoon the hard poui sang wapp, wapp, a tinge of
iron in the wood.
They rested for one hour when night was coming like a great
black pig
(All the colours of the day came back to burn and praise them
in the sky)
Then the women bathed their flesh with cool water and gave
them to drink and corn cakes to eat
Their followers set up flambeaux on iron drums in the circle
And they fought again by orange flames in the rich furious
pit,
The silence of a thousand silent men around the hard singing
wapp, wapp, of the sticks.
Three stars flashed with silver tails above in the black night,
a good sign of God’s interest.
Mangamouche had five broken fingers and all his fingernails
were torn off,
La Cour Harpe had deep injuries in his belly and his face
burnt with the sweat in all the fine cuts,
But both had their eyes still to judge and hit and parry well
So they fought, calm-eyed. Men thought they would fight
forever—
And indeed, as men will tell you, they fought for longer than
forever.
Then Mangamouche with the giant’s strength in the hot
second afternoon
Swung his red poui for a thousandth time and La Cour Harpe
had only bitter weakness;
The blow swung from great shining arms burst six of all his
white ribs.
A shout more of genera1 glory then of single pride for either
man
Sprung around the fighters; two small boys fell off a calabash
tree in excitement!
Pouches of jumby beads and pennies were cast in the scarred pit.
They sang of it after
With the sweet-harsh songs, songs of the stickmen for Man-
gamouche and La Cour Harpe:
Oh the strong kalindas shouted by the red-sleeved hard men,
“Je t’aime, Mangamouche, je t’aime triste Harpe, je vous aime,
grands noirs hommes.”
From the moon of a hummingbird’s wing to the moon of a
rich plum
The legend springs in the song, finds roots as tough as the
nut grass.