Caribbean Poetry "i could not hold it back or black it. . . .

." The coming together of the object as well as

the subject of attack concludes the poem. Ilnlike an imaginative perception which
the poet can retain in his memory and later transmute into poetry, the stone is a
concrete material object which leads to the physical effects of impairment and finally
death. It is significant that the Smith persona in this poem does not directly affix the
blame on his attackers. The stone, from being the instrument of death, comes to
epitomise the condition of the man who has died since he becomes as inanimate as it:
"i am the stone that kills me."

5.3.4 Peformance Poetry

In the Caribbean, poetry is not just words printed on a page but also spoken aloud for
an audience. There has been a tradition of poets teaming up with musicians for
performances. Even the deejays, who erase the words from records, retaining the
music to improvise the words as they perform, have been labelled as poets. Michael
Smith belonged to a group of poet-performers called "dub poets" by the British
Caribbean performer Linton Kwesi Johnson. Dub poetry is characterised by lines
meant to be spoken, generally to a two-beat rhythm, dealing mostly with the life
experiences or point of view of Black people. The most celebrated example is
Smith's frequently anthologised poem "Me Cyaan Believe It." I give below a few
lines from it:

Me seh me cyaan believe it

Me seh me cyaan believe it
Room dem a rent
me apply widin
but as me go een
cockroach rat and scorpion
also come een
(Hinterland 286)

If you read these lines aloud you will be able to get some idea of its beat. As is
apparent the lines are about a poor man forced to rent a room (probably in a
tenement) infested with insects and animals. It is in this poem that Smith uses the
technique Brathwaite has incorporated in his tribute to him: "But me know yuh
believe it/ Lawwwwwwwwd/ me know yuh believe it." Elsewhere Brathwaite has
commented on Smith's remarkable voice and breath control on stage accompanied by
the "decorative" noise of the Japanese S90 motorbike: "On the page, Smith's
Lawwwwwwwwd is the S-90" ("History" 301). Not only is this reproduced in this
poem but it is also added to when Brathwaite makes the Smith persona proliounce
"murdererrrrrrrr." The inclusion of these sound effects is Brathwaite's tribute to the
performative aspect of poetry epitomised by Michael Smith.

5.4 COLOMBE

5.4.1 The Discoverer

Christopher Columbus (in Spanish, Cristobal Colon) 'discovered' the New World on
October 12, 1492 when he landed on an island called Guanahani by the Indians and
named San Salvador by him. It is this moment which is the subject of this poem.
The poem is from Brathwaite's 1992 collection Middle Passages, the year which
marked the Columbus quincentennial 'celebrations.' These were embroiled in
controversy following protests by native Americans for whom the discovery had also
meant extermination. As far back as 1967 Naipaul had written an article "Columbus
and Crusoe" in which he had commented with characteristic irony: "He [Columbus]
claimed . . . that he had got rid of two-thirds of the nativzs of Hispaniola in two years:
the remainder had been set to gathering gold dust. (This was an exaggeration : he
had only got rid of a third)" (221). The beginnings of this moment which inaugurated Edward
New World history for Europe is delineated in Brathwaite's poem. Barthwaite-I1

The figure of Columbus, like that of Crusoe, has held a special attraction for
Caribbean writers. Brathwaite himself has used the Columbus motif in many poems
in The Arrivants. As Simon Gikandi has observed: given the consequences of
European "modernization" of the New World, it appears almost impossible for
Caribbean writers to accept Todorov's claim that "we are all direct descendants of
Columbus" and that "it is with him that our genealogy begins" (2). The claims to
modernization and discovery made on behalf of Columbus's arrival are all more
problematic considering the fact that it was by accident that he came here. He had
originally set out to reach Asia by a Western route. To add to this was the fact that
his motives were openly mercenary, only tangentially geographical and civilizational
only in so far as they helped further the former. This should put to'rest any
Eurocentric assumptions about Columbus's arrival being universally beneficial and
hence a cause of 'celebration.'

5.4.2 The Text

"Colombe"
C
olumbus from his after-
deck watched stars, absorbed in water,
melt in liquid amber drifting
through my summer air
Now with morning shadows lifting
beaches stretched before him cold & clear
Birds circled flapping flag & mizzen
mast. Birds harshly hawking. without fear
Discovery he sailed for. was so near.

C
olumbus from his after-
deck watched heights he hoped for
rocks he dreamed. rise solid from my simple water
Parrots screamed. Soon he would touch
our land. his charted mind's desire
The blue sky blessed the morning with its fire
But did his vision
fashion as he watched the shore
the slaughter that his soldliers
furthered here? Pike
point & musket butt
hot splintered courage. Bones
cracked with bullet shot
tipped black boot in my belly. The
whips uncurled desire?

C
olumbus from his after-
deck saw bearded fig trees. Yellow pouis
blazed like pollen & thin
waterfalls suspended in the green
as his eyes climbed towards the highest ridges
where our farms were hidden
Now he was sure
he heard soft voices mocking in the leaves
What did this journey mean. this
new world mean. dis
covery? or a return to terrors
he had sailed from. Known before?
I watch him pause
Then he was splashing silence
Crabs snapped their claws
And scattered as he walked towards our shore
Caribbean Poetry
Glossary

afterdeck: deck near the rear portion of a ship

amber: yellow coloured

mizzen mast: mast next to the rear of the main mast

hawking: flying with the intention of preying on other birds

Pike: long wooden shaft with pointed metal head

musket: gun

bearded fig tree: a tree with fig like berries, called bearded because of
the resemblance of its hanging aerial roots to beards

pouis: a large decorative tree which sheds its leaves and

flowers annually

5.4.3 Analysis

The letter "C" in bold type with which each stanza of the poem is superscribed is
apparently formed by splitting Columbus's name so that all three stanzas begin with
"olumbus." Not only is the letter "C" indicative of the name of the explorer but also
of the region he claimed to have discovered: the Caribbezn. It also has the same
pronounciation as "sea," on which the discoverer sailed to come to this region.
Brathwaite's play with language acquires other dimensions if the world "olumbus" is
broken into its constituent words, each of which has a typically Caribbean meaning.
It can be seen to be made up of "01," "um" and "bus." Take the first word which
means old and implies that Columbus was in his old age when he discovered the
region. This is historically accurate for his date of birth is usually taken to be c. 1445
which means that he was approaching old age when he landed at San Salvador in
1492. The second constituent "um" is creole for the third person pronoun 'him,'
sometimes used derogatively. The last word "bus" is a shortened form of "bluss"
meaning to deliver a sudden blow, cut, wound or whip. Taken together these words
posit Columbus as the perpetrator of violence which is elaborated upon in the second
stanza.

The idea of peace conveyed through Columbus's observation of the stars reflected in
the sea gives a false sense of security. Towards morning the sight of the beaches a
little distance away marks the goal of his voyage. The poem is from the perspective
of a native inhabitant of the area discovered by tbe voyager. This Amerindian shifts
between the first person singular and plural pronouns, "my" and "our," to describe the
devastation wreaked on his land and its inhabitants. It is therefore curious to observe
that Columbus's anticipation and expectation is also vividly presented in the poem.
The Amerindian persona clearly has an omniscient perspective. That the scenario
would be a wish fulfilment fantasy for Columbus is borne out by the words that the
land is "his charted mind's desire." An idyllic sunrise in the blue skies, the sight of
trees native to the region (bearded fig and poius), the gushing waterfalls are all a
fulfilment of his exotic imaginings. This exoticism is undercut by the harsh reality of
the violence unleashed on the natives by the soldiers accompanying and following
Columbus. Significantly the weapons used for attack: the pike and the musket
emblematise the missile which, in Brathwaite's view, is the governing symbol of
Western culture. Needless violence is a prefiguration of colonisalism, "whips
uncurled desire."
 Even the fulfilment of his longed for dream of discovery does not satisfy Columbus. Edward
He imagines he hears voices among the trees which mock his life's endeavour. Barthwaite-I1
Breaking the word "discovery" into two Brathwaite changes its sense so that it comes
to mean an uncovering of "dis," the underworld in classical mythology. This does
not mean that the New World is hellish but rather that the impulse which led
Columbus to its search was dark in its origin. If he had undertaken the voyage for a
cathartic purpose, to rid himself of whatever was dark or negative in him, then clearly
that purpose has been defeated. Like the crabs snapping their claws the colonists
reveal the ugly side of human nature when they come in contact with those living on
the land they claim to have discovered. It is with this potent image of antagonism
embedded in human nature that the poem ends.

5.4.4 Seametrics

A previous version of this poem was published in the first volume of The Arrivanrs.
There it is a part of a longer poem from the "Islands and Exiles" section of Rites of
Passage and is titled "The Emigrants." Like the Caribbean emigrants to first world
countries Columbus is seen as an emigrant to the New World, a placing which
somehow represses the historical enormity of Columbus's "emigration" for the
Amerindians. This is not surprising for at that stage in his career Brathwaite has
admitted to "having written a history book which had said there were no
Amerindians. . . ." With a change in perspective there came a changed version of the
poem. The difference is primarily in the typography. If you look at this poem
carefully you will observe that the printed matter tapers upwards from the left and
right sides at "c." The last line is longer than the others and forms a kind of a base.
Draw lines along the printed matter and observe that the shape is very much like a
, rocket or a missile. And yet the poem captures the ebb and flow of the sea
thematically. Brathwaite has explained this through his concept "seametrics":

I have a thing that I call seametrics, bcause the sea influences

the landscape. The sea influences the nature of poetry--the
pauses between the words, the tidalectic nature of the sea;
which is differnt from the notion of the dialect of the
marksman: all of these things are there in the poetry.
(qtd. in James 763)

While the 'shape' of the poem is that of the marksman, the pike, the bullet, the missle
are symbols of an expansionist like Columbus; the rhythm or dialect is that of the sea.
This movement of the water backward and forward is expressed through the close
and distant scenes which alternate in the poem. From the stars in the water to the
heights of the rocks, from the trees near the shore to the "hidden" farms, all are
filtered through the consciousness of the Amerindian persona who imagines
Columbus observing them. The juxtaposition of an icon of Western civilization with
the rhythm of the New World illustrates their encounter in visual and thematic terms.

5.5 LET US SUM UP

I hope you have read Brathwaite's later poetry carefully and now have an idea about
the change in his poetic concerns particularly in the eighties and nineties. The
diversity of perspectives exhibited is a particularly noticeable feature. Based on an
assesment of his first trilogy many commentators had dismissed Brathwaite as a
"folk" poet with all the pejorative connotations of parochialism this word seems to
have acquired. The selection of poems in this unit is intended to dispel this erroneous
notion about his poetry. Freedom from the shackles of pentameter, conventional
punctuation, print format and fixed meanings of words through the evolution of a
distinct "video style" is evinced in all the poems analysed.