Night of the Scorpion become diminished² by your pain.
May the poison purify your flesh
Nissim Ezekiel India
I remember the night my mother
was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours
of steady rain had driven him
BITE IN 2 POEMS FOR GRADE 9
to crawl beneath a sack of rice.
Parting with his poison – flesh
of diabolic¹ tail in the dark room –
he risked the rain again.
The peasants came like swarms of flies
and buzzed the Name of God a hundred times
to paralyse the Evil One.
With candles and with lanterns
throwing giant scorpion shadows
on the mud-baked walls
they searched for him; he was not found.
They clicked their tongues.
With every movement that the scorpion made
his poison moved in Mother’s blood, they said.
May he sit still, they said.
May the sins of your previous birth
be burned away tonight, they said.
May your suffering decrease
the misfortunes of your next birth, they said.
May the sum of evil
balanced in this unreal world
against the sum of good
of desire, and your spirit of ambition,
they said, and they sat around
on the floor with my mother in the centre,
the peace of understanding on each face.
More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours,
more insects, and the endless rain.
My mother twisted through and through
groaning on a mat.
My father, sceptic,³ rationalist,
trying every curse and blessing,
powder, mixture, herb and hybrid
He even poured a little paraffin
upon the bitten toe and put a match to it.
I watched the flame feeding on my mother.
I watched the holy man perform his rites
to tame the poison with an incantation.5
After twenty hours
it lost its sting.
My mother only said,
Thank God the scorpion picked on me
and spared my children.
1. diabolic – like a devil
2. diminished – lessened
3. septic – doubter, only trusting logic and reason
4. hybrid – made by two things
5. incantation – magical words.
from My Uncle
Edward Brathwaite Barbados
My uncle made chairs, tables, balanced doors on,
dug out
coffins, smoothing the white wood out
with plane and quick sandpaper until
it shone like his short-sighted glasses.
The knuckles of his hands were silvered
knobs of nails hit, hurt and flat-
tened out with the blast of a heavy hammer. He
was
knock-knee’d,
flat footed and his clip clop sandals flapped
across the concrete
flooring of his little shop where canefield
mulemen and a
fleet
of Bedford lorry drivers dropped in to scratch
themselves and talk.
There was no shock of wood, no beam
of light mahogany his saw teeth couldn’t handle.
When shaping squares for locks, a key hole
care tapped rat tat tat upon the handle
of his hump-backed chisel. Cold
world of wood caught fire as he whittled:
rectangle
Window frames, the intersecting x of fold-
in chairs, triangle
trellises,¹the donkey
box-cart in its squeaking square.
But he was poor and most days he was hungry.
Imported cabinets with mirrors, formica table
tops, spine-curving chairs made up of tubes, with
hollow
steel-like bird bones that sat on rubber ploughs,
thin beds, stretched not on boards, but blue
high-tensioned cables,
were what the world preferred.
1. trellises – frames for growing plants up
On Killing a Tree
Gieve Patel India
It takes much time to kill a tree,
Not a simple jab of the knife
Will do it. It has grown
Slowly consuming the earth,
Rising out of it, feeding
Upon its crust, absorbing
Years of sunlight, air, water,
And out of its leprous hide
Sprouting leaves.
So hack and chop
But this alone won’t do it.
Not so much pain will do it.
The bleeding bark will heal
And from close to the ground
Will rise curled green twigs,
Miniature¹ boughs-
Which if unchecked will expand again
To former size.
No,
The root is to be pulled out-
Out of the anchoring earth;
It is to be roped, tied,
And pulled out – snapped out
Or pulled out entirely,
Out from the earth-cave,
And the strength of the tree exposed,
The source, white and wet,
The most sensitive, hidden
For years inside the earth.
Then the matter
Of scorching and choking
In sun and air,
Browning, hardening,
Twisting, withering,
And then it is done.
1. Miniature – very small
That Old Mulemba dead. It was as if
it were the death of my own life!
Geraldo Bessa Victor Angola
You, reader, who are reading me,
That old mulemba . . . you are going to tell me with surprise:
Why do you suffer? I do not understand
Men armed with machetes The cause of your weeping.
and axes came, They cut down a cashew-tree,
hardened in body and soul where you ate so many good cashew nuts;
(where goodness is not sown)
ordered by someone with a heart of stone
-and thus, in the name of the law,
they demolished and killed
that old mulemba.
old queen without a king.

They did not suffer, they did not cry;

I alone cried;

My old mulemba . . .
Under its shade (I was a kid),
playing with other children,
I tried a step of the massemba . . .
So many times I stretched out my mat
and there did sums
under the shade of the mulemba.

Alone I cried from nostalgic¹ yearning,

when today I saw it fallen,
They cut down a baobab,
where you savoured many mucuas;
they also cut down a tamarind-tree
where you ate the tasty tamarind.
They cut down those trees
that provided you shade and fruit;
and you remained like a beast,
you did not feel then the compassion
that you now have for the old mulemba,
that gave you nothing but shade!
No one can understand
the grief of my longing,
which causes me to suffer!
You, reader who are reading me,
please note the truth
which I can never forget.
- Once as a boy
I tugged at the moustaches of my older
grandfather;
he gave a slap,
so that my black face turned red.
So, for many years, day after day,
I used to pull the branches of the old mulemba,
out of them I made a swing to play;
and the old mulemba never became angry,
never did anything to me,
not a single slap, not a single lament,
other than the strokings of the long beard
on my face, on my body, when the wind
was kissing and shaking it . . .
My old mulemba . . .
Ah! I alone know what makes me suffer!
Translated from the Portuguese by Donald Burness
1. nostalgic – longing for things of the past.
The Shell
James Stephens Ireland

And then I pressed the shell

Close to my ear,
And listened well.

And straightaway, like a bell,

came low and clear
The slow, sad murmur of far distant seas

Whipped up by an icy breeze.

Upon a shore
Wind-swept and desolate.

It was a sunless strand that never bore

The footprint of a man,
Nor felt the weight

Since time began

Of any human quality or stir,
Save what the dreary winds and waves incur.

And in the hush of waters was the sound

Of pebbles, rolling round:
For ever rolling, with a hollow sound:
And bubbling sea-weeds, as the waters go,
Swish to and fro
Their long, cold tentacles of slimy grey:
There was no day;
Nor ever came a night
Setting the stars alight
To wonder at the moon:
Was twilight only, and the frightened croon,
Smitten to whimpers, of the dreary wind
And waves that journeyed blind . . .
And then I loosed my ear – Oh, it was sweet
To hear a cart go jolting down the street.
The Pheasant
Robert P. Tristam Coffin USA
The pheasant cock sprang into view,
A living jewel, up he flew.
His wings laid hold on empty space,
Scorn bulged his eyeballs out with grace.
He was a hymn from tail to beak
With not a tender note or meek.
Then the gun let out its thunder,
The bird descended struck with wonder.
He ran a little, then, amazed,
Settled with his head upraised.
The fierceness flowed out of his eyes
And left them meek and large and wise.
Gentleness relaxed his head,
He lay in jeweled feathers, dead.

Christmas Card
Frank Collymore Barbados
December,
In far off lands
The cold winds prick and blow
And the gaunt trees take on
Their canopy of snow;
But here the sun burns,
And upon the green lane
Poinsettia spills her rich bright blood
Again.
December,
Impossible to think
Of cold winds and ice and snow
But for the frozen foam
Of the coralita hanging low
Along the wayside trellises,
Frail as frost; but springing
From warm earth while Christmas bells
Are ringing.
Flame-heart
Claude McKay Jamaica
So much I have forgotten in ten years,
So much in ten brief years! I have forgot
What time the purple apples come to juice,
And what month brings the shy forget-me-not.
I have forgot the special, startling season
Of the pimento’s flowering and fruiting;
What time of year the ground doves brown the
fields
And fill the noonday with their curious fluting.
I have forgotten much, but still remember
The poinsettia’s red, blood-red, in warm
December.
I still recall the honey-fever grass,
But cannot recollect the high day when
We rooted them out of the ping-wing path
To stop the mad bees in the rabbit pen.
I often try to think in what sweet month
The languid¹ painted ladies used to dapple
The yellow by-road mazing from the main,
Sweet with the golden threads of the rose-apple.
I have forgotten – strange – but quite remember
The poinsettia’s red, blood-red, in warm The Quarrel
December.
Mark Young New Zealand
What weeks, what months, what time of the mild
year Put down those words.
We cheated school to have our fling at tops? rocks picked hastily from the beach of mind
What days our wine-thrilled bodies pulsed with for your defence. There is no need
joy for such an action
Feasting upon blackberries in the copse!² to be taken.
Oh some I know! I have embalmed³ the days,
Even the sacred moments when we played, Unprime your anger, Cannons
All innocent of passion, uncorrupt, never stopped a war but brought
At noon and evening in the flame-heart’s shade. more cannons in to bear. I
We were so happy, happy, I remember, am unarmed. See, my hands
Beneath the poinsettia’s red in warm December. are empty.

If you must fight

¹languid - slow moving then let it be with gestures. Once
²copse – small wood
³embalmed – kept the same, preserved
stinging sentence tears my flesh
words cannot be
withdrawn.

Gestures can be bent

though, broken, turned from anger into love
by slightest twist of wrist.
Here is my hand:
Please take it.
I am Glad to be Up and About
Taufiq Rafat Pakistan

I am glad to be up and about this sunny

morning,
Walking the raised path between fields.
While all around me
Are cheerful folk harvesting potatoes.

I am glad to be away from books,

Broadcasts and the familiar smells,
And the unending pursuit of a livelihood.

Small boys on their way to school

Trail their toes through the stripped soil,
And pounce with joy
Upon the marble-size potatoes left behind by the
harvesters,
And with these fill their satchels.

One voice is raised in song,

While the men, hunkering on their heels,
Move up in a line like pirates
To uncover the heaps of buried treasure,
And transfer them to baskets.
And girls who should be playing with dolls
Unload the baskets into sacks
Which tonight or tomorrow night
Will be speeding in a groaning truck
To Karachi, a thousand miles away.

And this week or the following week,

Bilious businessmen and irate’ wives
And their washed and prattling children,
Will sit down at uncounted tables
And hastily devour the potatoes I see
With never a thought for these
Fields, these men and this sunny morning.

¹’irate - angry