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ISBN-13: | 9781847772671 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Carcanet Press, Limited |
Publication date: | 06/01/2014 |
Pages: | 80 |
Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.30(d) |
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The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion
By Kei Miller
Carcanet Press Ltd
Copyright © 2014 Kei MillerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84777-434-7
CHAPTER 1
The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion
i. in which the cartographer explains himself
You might say
my job is not
to lose myself exactly
but to imagine
what loss might feel like –
the sudden creeping pace,
the consultation with trees and blue
fences and whatever else
might prove a landmark.
My job is to imagine the widening
of the unfamiliar and also
the widening ache of it;
to anticipate the ironic
question: how did we find
ourselves here? My job is
to untangle the tangled,
to unworry the concerned,
to guide you out from cul-de-sacs
into which you may have wrongly turned.
ii. in which the rastaman disagrees
The rastaman has another reasoning.
He says – now that man's job is never straightforward
or easy. Him work is to make thin and crushable
all that is big and as real as ourselves; is to make flat
all that is high and rolling; is to make invisible and wutliss
plenty things that poor people cyaa do without – like board
houses, and the corner shop from which Miss Katie sell
her famous peanut porridge. And then again
the mapmaker's work is to make visible
all them things that shoulda never exist in the first place
like the conquest of pirates, like borders,
like the viral spread of governments
iii.
The cartographer says
no –
What I do is science. I show
the earth as it is, without bias.
I never fall in love. I never get involved
with the muddy affairs of land.
Too much passion unsteadies the hand.
I aim to show the full
of a place in just a glance.
iv.
The rastaman thinks, draw me a map of what you see
then I will draw a map of what you never see
and guess me whose map will be bigger than whose?
Guess me whose map will tell the larger truth?
v. in which the rastaman offers an invitation
Come share with I an unsalted stew
an exalted stew of gungo peas and callaloo
and let I tell you bout the nearby towns
the ways and chains that I-man trod
how every road might buck yu toe
down here in Babylon.
vi.
after Kai Krause
For the rastaman – it is true – dismisses
too easily the cartographic view;
believes himself slighted
by its imperial gaze. And the ras says
it's all a Babylon conspiracy
de bloodclawt immappancy of dis world –
maps which throughout time have gripped like girdles
to make his people smaller than they were.
vii.
But there are maps
and then again, there are maps;
for what to call the haphazard
dance of bees returning
to their hives but maps
that lead to precise
hibiscuses, their soft
storehouses of pollen?
And what to call the blood
of hummingbirds but maps
that pulse the tiny bodies across
oceans and then back?
And what are turtles born with
if not maps that break
eggs and pull them up from sand
guide them towards ocean instead of land?
viii.
I&I overstand, for is true that I-man
also look to maps drawn by Jah's large hands
him who did pull comets cross the sky
to lead we out from wicked Pharaoh's land.
At noon when sun did hide the high
graph of stars, the cosmic blueprint
of I&I freedom, is Jah who point our eyes
to well-bottom an say blink and blink until
you see again the spread of guiding galaxies.
Babylon science now confirm – stars too
are 'black bodies'. I&I did done know this
already – that up there is Jah-Jah's firmament
full of light and livity.
A Prayer for the Unflummoxed Beaver
so unmoved by the boat's slow approach – the boat
drifting across the flat green acre of water; a prayer
for these acres of water which, in the soft light, seem firm;
the squirrels, however, are never taken in;
a prayer for the squirrels and their unknowable
but perfect paths; see how they run across
the twisting highway of cedars but never crash;
a prayer for the cedars and their dead knees rising
from the water like tombstones; a prayer for the cedar balls
that break when you touch them and stain
your fingers yellow, that release from their tiny bellies
the smell of old churches, of something holy;
a prayer returned to the holy alligators – you owe them
that at least, for just last night when you thought
of Hana Andronikova you asked them to pray
with you, knowing that their prayers are potent;
at night the grass is full of their red eyes; a prayer
for the grass which the alligators divide
in the shape of a never-ending S; you lean over
to pull some into the boat; in Burma
this is called ka-na-paw, and can be cooked
with salt and oil; a prayer for the languages
we know this landscape by; for the French
as spoken by fat fishermen, the fat fishermen
who admit to the water – We all dying.
You understand? Savez? A prayer
for the dying that will come to all of us
but may it come soft as a boat drifting across the bayou.
May it find us unrattled and as unflummoxed as the beaver.
For Hana Andronikova (1967–2011)
ix. in which the cartographer travels lengths and breadths
Give him time and he will learn the strange
ways and names of this island: the clapping ascent
to Baptist; the thankful that takes you up Grateful Hill –
Grateful Hill just round the corner from Content; will know
the rough and proud to Boldness and Blackness;
the painful chains to Bad Times; the long and short
to Three Miles, Six Miles, Nine Miles, Eleven Miles
whose distances, incidentally, are unrelated
to each other; he'll know the haunting that takes you
through Duppy Gate; the slow that goes to Wait-a-Bit;
the correct etiquette to Accompong, even to
Me-No-Sen-You-No-Come; will know the grunting path
to Hog Hole; the struggle required for Effort; the potholed
roads to Shambles, Rat Trap and Putogether Corner;
as well, the cartographer will know places named
after places – how this island spreads out as a palimpsest
of maps: for here is Bethlehem; here is Tel Aviv; here
is Gaza; also Edinburgh; Aberdeen; Egypt; Cairo;
and here is Bengal; Mount Horeb; Albion; Alps;
they say – all of here is Babylon.
Place Name
Me-No-Sen-You-No-Come. In plain english: do not enter without invitation. For consider the once-upon-a-time adventures of rude pickney answering to name Goldilocks – nuff-gyal, self-invited into house of bears, assumed at once her colonial right to porridge, to beds and to chairs. The baff-hand child went in just so, not even a token offering of honey, and just like that proceeded to bruck up things. If only she had pennied the secret names of places. Me-no-sen-you-no-come: without invitation, you're not welcome. Or else, come in as you please – just know that this ground, these bushes, these trees observe you with suspicion many centuries deep.
x. in which the cartographer asks for directions
Sometimes the cartographer gets frustrated when he asks an I-formant how to get to such and such a place, and the I-formant might say something like –
Awrite, you know the big white house at the bottom of Clover Hill with all the windows dem board up, and with a high shingle roof that look almost like a church?
Yes, the cartographer says.
And in front the house you always see a ole woman, only three teeth in her mouth, and she out there selling pepper shrimp in a school chair with a umbrella tie to it. And beside her she always have two mongrel dog and one of them is white and the nedda one is brown?
Yes, I know exactly where you mean, the cartographer says.
And in the yard there is a big guinnep tree that hang right out to the road, so school pickney always stop there to buy shrimp and eat free guinnep?
Yes, yes, the cartographer insists. I know it.
Good, says the I-formant. Cause you mustn' go there.
xi.
At other times he is amazed
by the hems and haws
and shrugs of our roads –
how they never run sure, but seem
to arc, bend or narrow, just so
an avenue will turn on itself
as if to give you back a place
you have just come from.
Lady Musgrave's Road was laid
in its serpentine way
so that Miss Musgrave
on her carriage ride home
would not have to see
a nayga man's property
so much bigger than her husband's
own, she did not want to feel
the carriage slow and know
her driver had just then turned
his face to Devon House,
a thing wet like pride in his eyes,
and nodding to himself yes,
is Missa Stiebel build dat. And to think
that such spite should pass
down even to the present
generation – should dictate
the thoughtless,
ungridded shape of our city,
the slowness of traffic each evening –
to think that one woman's pride
should add so much to our daily
commute – this is something
the cartographer does not wish
to contemplate. Still, he wonders
if on his map he made our roads a little
smoother, a little straighter, as if in drawing
he might erase a small bit of history's disgrace.
A Ghazal for the Tethered Goats
Sometimes in Jamaica, the roads constrict like throats
and around each green corner – the tethered goats.
They are provision from a god that craves
the sacrifice of sons. If not, the tethered goats.
They bleat all night who did not know the size
of abbe seeds and their own beings – these tethered goats.
They do not go to war but send their skins.
How sweet, the repercussion of tethered goats.
Kids tremble at the sound of gumbeh drums
and of their futures. How meek the tethered goats.
Their bellies run for sweetness, and their mouths
are full of awful doom – these tethered goats.
But how they stipple this island, from Trelawny
to Saint Ann to Saint Andrew, the tethered goats.
Roads
The secret roads and slaving roads,
the dirging roads, marooning roads.
Our people sing:
Alligator dah walk on road
Yes, alligator dah walk on road
The cow roads and cobbled roads,
the estate roads and backbush roads.
Our people sing:
Go dung a Manuel Road
Fi go bruck rock stone
The marl roads and bauxite roads,
the causeway roads and Chinese roads.
Our people sing:
Right tru right tru de rocky road
Hear Charlie Marley call you
The press-along, the soon-be-done,
the not-an-easy, the mighty-long –
so many roads we trod upon
and every mile, another song.
xii. in which the rastaman begins to feel uncomfortable
So wide is the horizon as seen
from the flung-open windows
of Rose Hall Great House
that one can observe
the clear
curve of the earth.
For the cartographer
the sea becomes
a glittering parabola,
an arc
of shining measure;
for the rastaman it is
an upturned dutch pot,
the one unwittingly shined
by Anansi's wife, a silver tale
of greed in the midst
of famine,
the tragic
fullup of big-men's belly,
the wash-weh
of small people's magic.
xiii.
You see, the rastaman
has always felt uneasy
in the glistening white splendour
of Great Houses; uneasy
with the way others
seem easy inside them,
their eyes that smoothly scan the green canefields
like sonnets,
as if they'd found
a measure of peace
in the brutal
architecture of history.
xiv.
But the cartographer, it is true,
dismisses too easily the rastaman's view,
has never read his provocative dissertation –
'Kepture Land' as Identity Reclamation
in Postcolonial Jamaica. Hell!
the cartographer did not even know
the rastaman had a PhD (from Glasgow
no less) in which, amongst other things, he sites
Sylvia Wynter's most cryptic essay: On How
[We Mistook the Map for the Territory,
and Reimprisoned Ourselves in
An Unbearable Wrongness of Being ...
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion by Kei Miller. Copyright © 2014 Kei Miller. Excerpted by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Acknowledgements,
Epigraph,
Groundation,
The Shrug of Jah,
Establishing the Metre,
Quashie's Verse,
Unsettled,
What the Mapmaker Ought to Know,
The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion,
A Prayer for the Unflummoxed Beaver,
Place Name: Me-No-Sen-You-No-Come,
A Ghazal for the Tethered Goats,
Roads,
Place Name: Swamp,
For the Croaking Lizards,
Place Name: Wait-A-Bit,
Place Name: Shotover,
Place Name: Corn Puss Gap,
Place Name: Half Way Tree,
Place Name: Edinburgh Castle,
Hymn to the Birds,
Filop Plays the Role of Papa Ghede (2010),
Distance,
When Considering the Long, Long Journey of 28,000 Rubber Ducks,
The Blood Cloths,
Place Name: Bloody Bay,
For Pat Saunders, West Indian Literature Critic, after her Dream,
In Praise of Maps,
My Mother's Atlas of Dolls,
Place Name: Flog Man,
Place Name: Try See,
What River Mumma Knows,
Notes,
About the Author,
Also by Kei Miller from Carcanet Press,
Copyright,