eBook
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781847779236 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Carcanet Press, Limited |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 80 |
| File size: | 211 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
A Light Song of Light
By Kei Miller
Carcanet Press Ltd
Copyright © 2010 Kei MillerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84777-924-3
CHAPTER 1
Day Time
Twelve Notes for a Light Song of Light
i A light song of light is not sung
in the light; what would be the point?
A light song of light swells up in dark
times, in wolf time and knife time,
in knuckle and blood times; it hums
a small tune in daytime, but saves
its full voice for the midnight.
ii A light song of light spits from its mouth
the things that occasionally gather:
the dull taste of morning and cobwebs
(you would not believe their thickness),
and the strangest word – caranapa –
so much larger than its letters, a Maroon
of a word and a word so silent
it is the opposite of song.
iii A light song of light occasionally stutters.
This is par for the course.
There is no need for concern
no need for bed-rest or vitamins
no need to take your song in
to the song specialist for treatment.
iv But were you to take your light song in
for a thorough checking-up, a blood screening,
you might discover your song has cancer,
HIV, diabetes, is going blind in its left eye.
You may not have strength to sing
your song for this season or the next.
But a light song of light cannot be
held back. It cannot wait on health
or its perfect occasion.
v A light song of light meditates in the morning,
does yoga once a week, accepts the law
of karma. It may not worship in a synagogue
it may not worship in a balmyard
but still it believes in a clean heart
in righteous living and the general
avoidance of pork. It would like to touch
your feet, pronounce a blessing
before you go:
Jah guide and protect always.
Selah.
Ashe.
Ashe.
vi A light song of light will summon daffodils,
bluebells and strawberries, humming birds;
will summon silver, the shine of sequins,
the gold of rings – and the dreadful luminosity
of everything we had been told to close
our eyes to (because they had no sharp
edges, because they could not be wielded
against our enemies) will be called back into service –
retired weapons that have no memory of war,
or that they could fight, or that they could win.
vii A light song of light is not reggae,
not calypso, not mento or zouk,
not a common song from a common island,
not a song whose trail you have followed for umpteen years,
a song trembled from the single tooth of
the Singerman – the Singerman who had beat his tune
out from a sheet of zinc
and how it surprised you, the thin bellies
from which music could be drawn.
You did not know then that his song came
at the price of history and cane
and the terrible breadth of oceans: a price
which, even now, you cannot fully consider.
viii A light song of light don't talk
the way I talk most days.
To tell the truth I never know at first
what this country was going do me –
how I would start hearing myself
through the ears of others,
how I would start putting words on a scale
and exchange the ones I think in
for the ones I think you will understand,
till it become natural, this slow careful way
of talking, this talk like the walk of a man
who find himself on a street he never born to,
who trying hard to look like nothing
not bothering him. And maybe nothing wrong
with a false talk like that, but that
is no way to sing.
ix A light song of light is not understood completely
not in the moment it is sung
and maybe not for months after.
But it sings with a faith common
in those who never lost their accents
who talk their talk knowing, tssst
you may not catch everything but chu –
you will catch enough.
And if you don't catch nothing
then something wrong with your ears –
they been tuned to de wrong frequency.
x A light song of light tells knock-knock jokes
and tells them in order
to illustrate the most heartbreaking points.
It is not that the song
does not know the weight of sadness;
it is not that the song
does not take things seriously;
it is not that the song
needs to write one hundred times on a chalkboard –
I will be heavy,
I will be heavy, I will be heavy, I will be heavy ...
xi A light song of light is distant cousin
to songs we sing in bath tubs,
is related then, by accident, to water
and to soap and to square white tiles
that bounce sound one from another,
is related also to rain and to blankets
and to the little things we say
to get us through the hurricane.
xii A light song of light says thank you
to the paper it is written on –
this most solid evidence of its existence
however thin. Sometimes though,
a light song of light wishes it were written
on material even thinner, the shaft of morning
that slides through a shut window.
A light song of light believes nothing
is so substantial as light, and
that light is unstoppable,
and that light is all.
This Zinc Roof
This rectangle of sea; this portion
Of ripple; this conductor of midday heat;
This that the cat steps delicately on;
This that the poor of the world look up to
On humid nights, as if it were a crumpled
Heaven they could be lifted into.
God's mansion is made of many-coloured zinc,
Like a balmyard I once went to, Peace
And Love written across its breadth.
This clanging of feet and boots,
Men running from Babylon whose guns
Are drawn against the small measure
Of their lives; this galvanized sheet; this
Corrugated iron. The road to hell is fenced
On each side with zinc –
Just see Dawn Scott's installation,
A Cultural Object, its circles of zinc
Like the flight path of johncrows.
The American penny is made from zinc,
Coated with copper, but still enough zinc
That a man who swallowed 425 coins died.
This that poisons us; this that holds
Its nails like a crucified Christ, but only
For a little while. It rises with the hurricane,
Sails in the wind, a flying guillotine.
This, a plate for our severed heads;
This that sprinkles rust
over our sleep like obeah;
This that covers us; this that chokes us;
This, the only roof we could afford.
Some Definitions for Song
for Richard and Natalie
— the speech of birds, as in birdsong, but with exceptions. Pigeons do not sing. Vultures do not sing. A bargain, or a very small sum, as in 'he bought it for a song'. Think what we could purchase with songs, thrown across the counter and landing more softly than coins. Perhaps then, the origin of the expression, to sing for your supper. The troubled sound that escapes from a woman's mouth while she dreams of fire, also any sound that escapes, also anything that escapes; a passage out, the fling up of hands. A prison break is a song. The parting of the Red Sea was a song. In Israel there are many songs, but there should have been six million more. Across the Atlantic, there are many songs, but we needed ten million more. Sòng [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] was a state during the Eastern Zhou Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 BC). Its capital was Shangqiu. Anything that climbs is a song; vines are a song; my father, seventy years old, at the top of the ackee tree is a song; all planes are songs. Song was a low-cost airline operated by Delta. Tourists were flown by Song to Florida. Song's last flight was on 30 April 2006. All that pleases the heart. All that pleases the ear. The final measure of joy. When we have lost song, we have lost everything. A common surname in Korea, often transliterated as Soong. What would it mean if your name was Song? Song is the third and final album of Lullaby for the Working Class. It was released 19 October 1999. Songs often refer to songs, as in 'He shall encompass me with a song'; 'Sing unto the Lord a new song'; 'Sing a song of sixpence'. Sing a song. Sing a song.
Until you too have journeyed
Until you too have journeyed through caves,
through miles of damp and bats, the cool
of all that is not living; until your one torch
has flickered out and you have found yourself
in a dark so dark you forget your eyes
or if they are opened; until you've had to find
a way, inch by careful inch, stopping to invent
an arrow out of wind; until you discover
how the feel and sound of stone or pebble
can exist without an image, the very thought
of colour competing for the air; until you too
have lost the day and the day has lost you
and it dawns on you, how foolish to have come
willingly to where the dead are put – until then
do not scoff at what has become our common
language for tomorrow and hope, this bright opening,
this end of dark, this light at the end of the tunnel.
Some Definitions for Light (I)
— [etymology] photo, root word for light, hence photology – the study of light. Photometer – the measurement of light. Photophilia, the love of light; the photophilic are drawn helpless, like sunflowers whose round faces travel across the day like the hand of a clock, like Agatha who insisted on dying even though she was well. Photomania, an obsession with light – in 1974 a man was found sweating in his small room, surrounded by a congregation of lamps, 137 bulbs burning, even during the day he was trying to create. Photophobia, the fear of light. Photophobics hide in shadows; their eyes hurt. The photophobic cannot read this; they are at risk of going blind. Blindness could be called photominimus or photomaximus. It is, at once, the absence and the great excess of light – the belly of a cave and its opening. Photogenic – concerning the basic helix strands of light, and also the ability to birth light. A photographer is one who writes about it; a photograph is writing composed of it – of brilliant, brilliant light. Look. Look closely – this is a photograph.
If this short poem stretches
If this short poem stretches beyond
its first line, then already, already,
it has failed, become something else,
something its author did not intend
for it to become, a misbehaving,
rambunctious, own-way thing,
its circuitous journey a secret known
only to itself, its tongue its own.
The author is destined, I am afraid,
to write poems that escape him.
This, for instance, was to be just one
line long, or even one long line,
dedicated to Mervyn Morris and his love
of brevity, but it has become something else
entirely. The poem sings its own song,
reaches its own end in its own time.
Notice to the Public, Please Observe
a found poem
I am available Tuesdays–Thursdays, 10 a.m.
Tickets will be issued and you will be dealt with
at that time. After that I am paralyzzz, blinddd
defff and dummm. If you have a hard luck story,
don't come. If I don't know you, don't come.
If my friend is the one who know you, don't come.
If you need to renew a missing passport
in a hurry, don't come. If you need to be
recommended to an embassy, don't come.
If you need a firearm licence, don't come.
If you need to bail someone and you don't bring
a Form 2 from the officer in charge, don't come.
If you are a soldier or police who feel him is as large
as the law and bigger than God, don't come.
If you have things to do that you should do
and you don't do them yet, don't come.
If you can read and understand this then
you won't waste your time and come.
Found on the gate of the residence of a Justice of the Peace, Portmore, Jamaica. March 2009.
Some Definitions for Light (II)
— [noun] The lungs of butchered animals are called lights. I have sometimes wondered if they pray – if, before the blade falls, cows and sheep and ducks fill their lungs with the weight of their dying, the nothingness to come, if their final sounds are light calling out to light.
The Longest Song
John Cage's composition 'As Slow As Possible' began being played in St Burchardi's Church, Germany in 2001 and is scheduled to end in the year 2640.
The longest song begins like a comma, a rest
that lasts for eighteen months. Long enough
that when the first chord is heard, surprising
as an extinct bird come back to life, many
cannot stop their tears. And one man
has told his wife he plans to weep
until the music has reached its next rest.
I suspect were we to pilgrim towards this
hymn, were we to sit in the hard pews
and only listen, patient through its months
of silence, our lives would be held
like a story my father tells me is true:
a man with a noose round his neck is allowed
one final song. He stands on the stage
and with a voice rivalling Franco Corelli, begins
ten billion green bottles standing on the wall.
And though this man has never lost count
of his bottles, all have lost count
of the years that have passed since,
the world outside the world of the song.
A hundred years at least they have stood still:
a man, his executioner, and the small crowd
of witnesses, all held as we too could be held
in a single room, our lives echoing
beyond their natural years, stretched
between clef and final fall, crescendo
and diminuendo, of one incredible song.
A Short Biography of the Singerman
The Singerman, born in 1903, has lived
in Spaulding, in Lime Tree Grove,
in a village called Rim – wherever
there were no roads, wherever the hills
rose up like a flock of green
parrots, you would find him.
Singerman, paid half shilling a week,
dug trenches, filled the pits with mortar
and bits of broken stone.
But Singerman's most crucial job
was to lift up mentos, time chichi-bud-o
to the swing of a workman's hammer;
and no one knew if it was the hammer
or if it was the song
but no rock was so strong
to resist the fourth accented beat –
that huh – in the Singerman's song.
Brochure
Avoid the three-lane highways;
drive on the Singerman's roads.
Your journey, even when bumpy,
will be sweet, the ascents lifting you
as in a chorus, the sharp corners
turning you like a force of melody.
There is a back road that sings
its off-beat way up Stony Hill –
built of course by the Singerman;
and the slim road to Mount Pleasant –
also built by the Singerman;
and yes, it was the Singerman
who orchestrated the long road
to Portland, made it full of waterfalls
so that a man and his mule
traversing the miles could forget,
for a while, the solemnity of their loads.
Please, when you visit Jamaica, drive
on the Singerman's roads.
What Can Be Accommodated
The Singerman's road can accommodate Benzes
and bicycles, Hondas and handcarts, your own
two feet, and the slow, complaining traffic of goats.
Colour blind cows have even been known
to read signs by their octagonal shapes
and stop. All God's creatures are welcome.
So long as you are heading somewhere,
the Singerman's road will take you there.
The Singerman's Papa
The Singerman's Papa was a Singerman
He was always a-singing, o-ho
The Singerman's Papa went to Panama
He went a-sailing, o-ho
The Singerman's Papa lost his song
He went a-searching, o-ho
Went searching the dust that filled his lungs
It was lost inside him, o-ho
The Singerman's Papa died in Panama
He died a-digging, o-ho
But his song died long before he did
It is buried inside him, o-ho.
The Colour of the Singerman's Songs
If the Singerman had gone to America
he woulda sung the blues
he woulda sung the blues
with a voice like John the Baptist
with a tongue covered in sand
and his blues woulda been that kinda blues
that is fed on locust and honey,
blues like a cry that cometh
from the wilderness, blues
like the sound of warthogs alarmed at the sky.
And the Singerman woulda sung it
from his field in Arkansas, straight
to Harold Arlen's sitting room
and Arlen woulda gone to the keys
to write a song more sad than 'Blues
in the Night'. But the Singerman did not go
to America. He stayed right here;
so bless up to him and his song and all music
that is sad in its own colour;
bless up to the notes that fall like flakes
of rust; bless up to every song that makes
its own way out of dungle, a path straight through
ghettoes; bless up to the mento which becomes ska
which becomes rubadub which becomes legend;
bless up all the red-gold songs, the weary evening time songs,
songs given to us by the Singerman.
In Defence of Obeah
[If there shall be found in the possession of any slave any poisonous drugs, pounded glass, parrots' beaks, or other materials notoriously used in the practice of Obeah or witchcraft, such slave upon conviction, shall be liable to suffer transportation from the island.
Obeah Law, 1816
was not just cat bones,
parrot beaks, the teeth
of alligators some would pat
our pockets in search of;
was not just poison brewed with shells;
was not just a way towards hell;
was not just a lock-up
of shadows in bottles
knowing man will surely dead
if his most basic shape is no longer
cast on ground; was not
just a duppy gather-round;
was not just a sundown
of candles, the wicks only
so long as the life of Massa;
was not just the slow
backward recital of verses;
was not just belly knotting curses;
it was all of that, but also
it was an anti-drowning
and it was all of that, but also
it was an anti-breaking
and it was all of that, but also
it was a knowledge
and it was all of that
and all of that
and it was
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Light Song of Light by Kei Miller. Copyright © 2010 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,Epigraph,
Day Time,
Twelve Notes for a Light Song of Light,
This Zinc Roof,
Some Definitions for Song,
Until you too have journeyed,
Some Definitions for Light (I),
If this short poem stretches,
Notice to the Public, Please Observe,
Some Definitions for Light (II),
The Longest Song,
A Short Biography of the Singerman,
Brochure,
What Can Be Accommodated,
The Singerman's Papa,
The Colour of the Singerman's Songs,
In Defence of Obeah,
Questions for Martin Carter,
Call this apocalyptic propaganda if you must,
For Cornelius Eady,
Thinkin Home,
Some Definitions for Light (III),
Night Time,
The Lost Prophecy of Alexander Bedward,
Abracadabra,
Unsung,
Prologue,
De True Story of Rolling Calf,
De True Story of Nathaniel Morgan,
De True Story of Coolie Duppy,
De True Story of deLaurence,
A Praise Song for Sudden Lights,
A Creed,
A Smaller Song,
For the Pilots,
A Short History of Beds We Have Slept in Together,
The Law Concerning Mermaids,
What We Thought Were Signs,
On the Ninth Night,
The Singerman's Other Job,
A Parting Song,
A Nine Night Song,
Noctiphobia,
Some Definitions for Night,
About the Author,
Also by Kei Miller from Carcanet Press,
Copyright,