Illuminated Verses

I L L U M I N AT E D VERSES

Frontispiece (For Yvonne Vera) Ain’t they insolently magnificent, these sistren? Don’t their leopard eyes slash lightning-brash? (Poets must stretch across vast spans of stars To snatch the matchless ones to match these eyes.) Impossible belles, imposing, impish, Their beauty can shatter governments. Like Zenobia, who drove Rome, bleeding, out of Egypt— Like Phillis Wheatley, whose quill quickened Equality— They serve Verse; they are subversive: Like Music, what illuminates Verse. Call them Blues and Jazz: Shout their praises! Bow down to them as if reciting prayer. Blues preach, “Scatter hums and moans I hear as Respect.” Jazz declare, “Grip a melody and tear up the notes.” Reader, think they won’t mind embraces, somewhat? To let kisses blaze upon their raven silk? Careful: they descend from Queen Ranavalona I. Who? Look her up in the Madagascar histories: She enjoyed beheading the thoughtless.

First published in 2005 by Kellom Books, an imprint of Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc. 180 Bloor Street West, Suite 801 Toronto, Ontario m5s 2v6 www.cpsi.ca Copyright © 2005 George Elliott Clarke, Ricardo Scipio, and Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be photocopied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of Canadian Scholars’ Press, except for brief passages quoted for review purposes. In the case of photocopying, a licence may be obtained from Access Copyright: One Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, m5e 1e5, (416) 868-1620, fax (416) 868-1621, toll-free 1-800-893-5777, www.accesscopyright.ca. Every reasonable effort has been made to identify copyright holders. Canadian Scholars’ Press would be pleased to have any errors or omissions brought to its attention. Canadian Scholars’ Press gratefully acknowledges financial support for our publishing activities from the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Clarke, George Elliott, 1960– Illuminated verses / George Elliott Clarke ; Ricardo Scipio, photographer. isbn 1-55130-280-2 1. Women, Black—Poetry. 2. Women, Black—Pictorial works. I. Scipio, Ricardo, 1965– II. Title. ps8555.l3748i44 2005

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Design: Susan Thomas/Digital Zone Calligraphy: Boyd Warren Chubbs Photographer: Ricardo Scipio 05

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Printed and bound in Canada by Marquis Book Printing Inc.

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For Geraldine Elizabeth Clarke (née Johnson), 1939-2000, & William Lloyd Clarke, 1935-2005 & Donna Chambers.

Beauty? … flesh on fire—on fire in the furnace of life blazing… —Hughes

Beauty is a power. —Summers

If not in yours In whose In whose language Am I If not in yours Beautiful —Philip

Light

Our beauty is BAD cause we bad. —Baraka

I have always respected Ricardo Scipio’s eye, his insight, his humility before Beauty. Since I first scanned his portfolio—I mean, his Pantheon— of African women (in 1993), I have imagined his work cathedraled in a book. Thus his pix gild my Lush Dreams, Blue Exile (1994), Beatrice Chancy (1999), and Blue (2001). Five interior snaps in Beatrice Chancy are also “Scipios.” Plainly, I like Scipio’s scope, his perception—or wisdom. His photographs gleam. (My poems are just their shadows.) True: it was a challenge to find a publisher for Illuminated Verses. Over eleven years, many were approached, but only Kellom, an imprint of Canadian Scholars’ Press, has chosen to set these visions before a public. Why? Maybe the idea of the unclothed black feminine seems too brazen, or just too dark a concept for a society addicted to depictions of elect whiteness. Whatever curses my verses merit, I think no allegation—political or aesthetic—may be legitimately posited against their “illuminations.” Yes, there will always be those who hate flesh, or who loathe négritude, or who don’t like men—and women—who like women. Of course, this book is not for them. George Elliott Clarke Toronto, Ontario Nisan MMV

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Our Black Woman

Black queen of Beauty, Thou hast given colour to the world. —Garvey

Every human being who has walked this Earth has a Black mother. She is the original woman, the channel, the source. I was fortunate enough to have grown up surrounded by Black women in my native island of Trinidad and in the Caribbean enclaves in Scarborough, Ontario, in the 70s and 80s. From a time before I can remember, I have had my breath taken away by the staggering beauty, nobility, and power of our Black women, starting with my own wonderful mother. For a decade, beginning in 1986, I worked as a fashion photographer in Toronto, New York, and Miami. It pained me constantly to witness how little respect the mainstream media has for natural Black beauty. I was allowed so few times to photograph Black women in a context of respect and sensitivity that I decided to quit the fashion industry forever and become an art photographer, to create images of natural beauty. In my mind right now, I am back at church, at 10 years old, watching one of the women beating her chest while wailing out loud for the Lord to give her strength. Her tears and sweat have already soaked her homemade dress. While I stare at her transfixed, she raises her big arms up to heaven in triumph. She is beatific. After nine years and 14 gallery shows of my Black nudes, I know that, if I could only capture a fraction of that woman’s beauty, my life’s work as a photographer would be accomplished. Ricardo Scipio 2005

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I L L U M I N AT E D VERSES

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I—Daughter of Music A style lights upon her— Daughter of Music, Beauty defining living song— Negro, Creole, Criollo. Don’t she feelingly compose sinuous woodwind, imperious brass, her voice coaxing Oaxaca, cocoa smokiness, her eyes lilting gold-ochre copper? Her form mimics fluid fire— sunlight breaking open, flaking, upon water, our African Atlantic, all saltwater taffy and masala molasses. A style lights upon her— she who broke from barracoon, swam from barracuda, clambered over barricades. By stymieing whips as strident as surf, by shouting down yelping dog-men (wishing her groaning in fields, moaning in bed), she cancelled their coffle cacophony. Refusing her captors music, to escape, she licensed silence. Amid pining leaves and ganja jungles, she augurs Joy, matrix of song.

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II—Daughter of Music A majesty amid their sty, a Queen impervious to stain— the vee at her thighs signified Eve— womanish woman of polished light, a gold so pure it purified light, and whose supreme haughtiness intimated Rhythm— silver tremors upon her ebony, copper quaking when she moved: heart jigging in her onyx palace, blood sounding ruby or sapphire flutes. After she rose up, flew from buckaroo devils wanting her strapped and studded, after she soared, aria-like, into North Star night, slipping her captors’ locksmith logic, their clanking theology of chains, she reconnoitered her true-true love, Ogun, God of Beauty-creating Chaos, and begat, in posh, love-call laughter, their nine natural daughters— Calypso, Soul, Jazz & Blues (twins), Poetry, Reggae, Anastacia, Dona Beatrice, and Oxum, all born to enforce and reinforce Love. But the Daughter of Music knows her pickney will force their way to Joy, so long as their mouths speak fire, roaring out triumphs. Look: the sun sets fervent flame upon her face. It serves her.

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I—Calypso

The surf fusses like furs nuzzling furs, that sigh-hiss of shh, shh, shh, where glides Calypso, nymph negrita. Her platinum eyes plunder phosphorescence when she thrusts from the surf, water leafing, branching, from her body, plaiting her a halo-crown of rain…. She jumps-up, dizzies that green-engrained water (liquid Monk velvet lapping sulking Mingus silk)— rouses drowsy azure and drizzles sizzling copper: “She’s a Rebel” minting urgent, insurgent government. Look at her: Yemaya, ocean goddess, throned upon peacock waves, sheer blue-green iridescence. She embodies Philosophy, searing; her voice surges, apocalyptic, The Fire Next Time.

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II—Calypso

By silver-edged water sighing ah, again, ahh, again, ahhh, with lustre burnishing her hues— chocolate, henna, dark bronze— Calypso shimmers, gleams, shimmers. Why shouldn’t swaying waves lave her? She herself is lava poured, alive, into Egyptian-classical, statue form. Cast her every movement in marble, or in blazing oils, watercolours that flame. She be ebon to the bone, a velvet poem, composed of silent, indelible ink. Her posture is its recital— “General Moses” (Harriet Tubman)—declaiming orders. Nightfall is as opaque as History— black lines etching creamy paper. Spy the subtext: white-crested water washes ashore as black as a slave coffle; here, darkling tears whitewash light. Surviving this History, this harsh scripture, Calypso stokes the bright revolt, rapture, of Dance— to kindle the truth of smouldering youth: intercourse that arsons Innocence.

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III—Calypso

When you go forth, churning soft froth, Calypso, you turn theologians into lunatics, lusting for anarchic bacchanalia, for strutting in an exquisite, china niche. Who can bypass Beauty? Regard how the ocean curls over, spangling white, black, white, but tangling, slinky, at your ankles. The ocean wants to be your lover, to surround you, moaning, sounding. But only insistent Love melts obsidian to charcoal, smouldering, cascading, juicing, distilling teal caramel, alfresco sugah, milky cassis, volcanic lilac.

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IV—Calypso

Oasis of pearl-pallor Curaçao, of cream glimmeringly agleam— with a rust stir, with a purple ripple. Waves chafe, buff, glass-smooth sand. Quicksilver shivers to foam-leaf, foam-petal. Come, Calypso, her skin, dusk-magenta-tinted, her cocoa-butter eyes buttering up rococo light. Hear guitars gush, steel-pans splash, while Calypso cha-cha-chas, tangos tinkling limbs, dances a cakewalk, Arawak Tai Chi, high steps to Trini, Indo-Afro Mas’, her feet twinkling up albino spray. Her “bony” flesh can sculpt fresh, ebony flesh, author thorough Beauty (in utero, plush), mother Isis, Gaia, Mary, Sheba, Aesop— and Voudon, Candomblé, Santeria. Likewise, the ocean pours out night— wet, sultry blackness.

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V—Calypso While palm trees shade thrusting water, while palm wine dashes thirsting throats, the fluctuating breeze and fluxing light model Calypso’s mood, Black, Brown, & Beige: She—tannin-and-melon melanin— marinades in sand, playin a pliant siren, to serenade a god with buttocks like a taut drum. She want no man but a god. She will quaff him like rum, flashing from a calabash. Calypso’s lover must evoke husky, smoked camellia sinensis, ply a musky, tarry aroma, try frank, swanky kisses, while fertile air blossoms spices— nutmeg, cinnamon, bergamot, myrrh— under birds’ shivering echoes, their whispering, whistling wings, their quavering, curlicuing cries— hoo-hoo, hoo-a-hoo, hoo-hoo, shoop shoop shoop shoop— until her own cries multiply sunlight. 14

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I—Soul

Where ya gonna find her, that anise, that sienna? Elusive, dreamt by Accompong during His thinking spree that fathered humanity, Soul defies mortal definition. Spin Duke Ellington’s poqo album— A Drum Is a Woman— or Tina Turner-type, turntable T.N.T. or D.D. Jackson’s quixotic Québécité: All speak Soul stone, adamant, fundamental, wherever brown-black sirens—nurses— noble muses—summum bonum— cry out, “Rhythm be innards of Mirth.” Find Soul between mbira and marimba, spiking melodies with downbeats.

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II—Soul

Face to face with Soul— her Selassian visage, King David shouts “Selah!” Soul be archetypal Cleopatra. Her lips are halves of a lavish apricot; her eyes spoon bluegreengrey water; her looks mirror coconut milk steeped in sepia rum— or topaz dashed with caramel. Array her in Lakmé saris, Salomé veils. Like Josephine Baker in bebop cabarets, like Maya Angelou in bongo-beat boîtes de nuit, like sonorous smoke out of cigarette-clarinets, she switches on stage to twitching flutes, her hips shaking, her hips, shaking, treating hard facts to a soft focus. Song is trembling tassels of vowels slipping like sugar through her throat. Her crux is rife with fire near rain, inner rain…. * Here is Highlife! Here is Jubilee!

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III—Soul

Soul’s backbone be rock— unbreakable, unshakeable. She faces down teargas, without crying, rubber—and real—bullets, without flinching, billy clubs and jails, without buckling. She refuse to suffer: I look the way I look. I speak the way I speak. I ain’t readily shook. I can’t easily break. Her soul hath grown strong like stone. Her Sarah Vaughn voice—sheer velvet—steels Langston Hughes: “Drum as you overcome. Drum as you overcome. Overcome as you drum.”

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IV—Soul

Eternity is femininity— that fount, that voluptuous chasm, that Sappho opus, that rouge grotto, where water drizzles, moistens, spawns, where whatever be hard is ridden and eroded by wet…. No one evacuates willingly this cave. (Shouldn’t coffins be shaped like that feminine diamond?)

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V—Soul Soul haunts light-wanton Heaven— daunting svelte branches vaunting an aqua-blue delta. Her beaucoup beauty flares. * Each day blossoms for her an Easter, starry with lotus, crocus, caresses like salutes (from fingers dexterous from practice on sibilant flutes). So Ms. Coptic, Ethiope, coos syrupy, not prissy, her face turned to Heaven out of even love, her Sphinx eyes lowered, closed, her voice kindling a scintillant hoodoo, oh, ohh, ohhh, ohhhh, ohhhhh, ohhhhhh, ohhhhhhh, ah…. Ah! Tie together leaves and scribble odes on each one: “Poetry Man” / “Hold Me Tight” / “When Doves Cry”— whims of rhymes, article clarity. Good people, it is the largesse of Poetry to bury critics.

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VI—Soul

Everyone’s eyes go knock-kneed to espy her— Abril Libra. See her eyes eyeing the sea. See her grave but sassy, grey-sapphire eyes (so much like those of Suzanne Malveaux and Mona States). Spy their incessant incandescence. Soul’s vesper-whispers secret hurtful joys, blessings wry…. Her every breath veers to Bible verses, so I and I see eye-to-eye. * Preach, Queen Creole, preach! “Am I not a hallelujah, air-borne, and perfume that disorients a breeze? “Consider me a languid miracle— a totem pole of copper fire: you do not forget the shape of a woman.”

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I—Blues & Jazz

Jazz parades, as snazzy as a temple, a tidal tremble in her hips, her spine whipping up a monsoon, in slippery rhythm and tempo, so she disrupts and chastises every metronome or clock. Her wrist whispers by your ear, her ankle stutters past your eye…. She got that New Orleans strut, groovin in her groove. Blues’ tongue penetrate your mouth to your heart, or thrills your ear to your brain; her sweat be stew you suck and chew— rich with vitamin A-1 alcohol, a wet cereal, a rain-meal, so you kiss her and reel drunk— sometimes with weeping, drooling sorrow, welled up from Mississippi, y’all. Don’t stare, unreflecting, at her; Don’t look, without thinking, into those eyes.

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II—Blues & Jazz Jazz croon, “I mix up myrrh with my spice, eat honeycomb with my baby, gorge gorgeous him on shiraz. I rise up—like a rose opens to rain— to open unto my Belovèd, spring molasses in my thighs, oozin rosewater, yeah, rose liqueur. I ain’t defiled to get filled with grits, to undress my love a belly banquet of apples, Calvados, and wine, to anoint him with brandy and cinnamon, apparel him in sandalwood and silk. My garden fountains unto Love, so lover murmurs, “Um, yessum, ah, mo, please, ahem, yeah, like that, lovely, okay, mmmmmmm”: language erectin monosyllabic mouments. Blues note, “Ma brassy saint got bushy, tea-black hair, an be a right-handsome crow-black, eh? His lips be blueberries an his cheeks be black an juicy like plush plums; His all-weather smile promises stout vim and vigour, the hard belt of his male mouth; his eyes be river eyes, preacher eyes; his manhood be blood-sausage in tint and feel and fit; his breast yield two sweet black currants; his kingly legs be towers of iron jetting down from a mahogany waist. His kisses be tasty, sucklin tar, his mouth wells with licorice an chocolate: to love him is to weep.”

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III—Blues & Jazz

Blues: Catch the anxious drift of glances on my face, Cross my breasts like succulent, indigo water, Down my turquoise hair, or riding my blue spine. My colour makes Beauty feel good, this good. Jazz:

Your blackness calls back now The Supremes, Or James Brown wailing, falling, wailing again, Blue-black tunes, two purple lips mauving night. Any dark fingers fixing your hair, also fix a ballad, A blues for sun-scorched skin, an ochre orchard, A song for you—Black, choice, delectable, all that.

Blues: A man’s a monster with knives in his veins, A piranha smile; shark instincts for brains. Jazz:

It is women who open The gates to Canaan or Eden.

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IV—Blues & Jazz When she hurts, Blues is Mississippi; when she flirts, Jazz is New Orleans. Their bodies, animate like poured wine, startle, unsettle, excite— cancelling cops of critics who carp, “They ain’t good music, or they’re obscene music, or they ain’t refined, or their postures ain’t ballet”: how losers critique Venus & Serena Wms. Bodacious Blues, audacious Jazz, ink a black-and-brass symphony, one that may succour ruckus, and give stars feelings. They scorn falsetto, shilly-shallying intellectuals, scorn also XY chromosomes gone XXX, scorn sanguine goyim gone sanguinary, scorn baby-doll sex, doll-house domesticity…. They’re clear grit, sheer fire to the backbone. Their eyes char chrome— first to puce, then saffron.

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V—Blues & Jazz Blues: My style’s hot and ruttin. Jazz:

I be cool and cuttin.

Blues: Like an April blizzard or an autumn breeze. Jazz:

And you be Huracàn, cyclone, tornado. A gust of august daggers.

Blues: Knives almost too sharp to look at. Jazz:

Or lightning from storm-dark, rambunctious ether.

Blues: When you shiver, you ravish governments. Jazz:

Dance, twist, leap, fly! Fly, oh, fly, girl! Mamba to marimba!

Blues: Lindy—or buck and wing—all the way back to Africa. Jazz:

To nourish.

Blues: To flourish. Duet: The fish possess the sea. The birds own all the sky. But we two got zero, If we’ve not I and I.

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I—Poetry Poetry—Madame Zajj—anatomizes the Negro: “The Negro be double-jointed double-consciousness (as in Du Bois), speaking one sucré et salé tongue, and sporting unembarrassed lips, and glorious, pillow naps, and eyes that glitter like steel pan. “Her self is ‘goddess theory gone earthy’— derived from earth smooth like leather, earth dark like coconut molasses, earth of savannah, bayou, and veldt, earth of banana, ginger, and coffee. Her Aesthetics are grounded in Luxury. “Dakar-dark, Arctic-dark, she imprints Beauty upon the world, holds Heaven in thrall. “She does not refuse the sun.

“The Negro talks up Africa and backtalks Europe, its barbarous, barking songsmiths. “Her palaver passes parliamentary laws to topple penitentiary walls. “Like Ida Wells-Barnett, she protests Wrong so well, police cringe and preachers cry. “She is Sojourner Truth in bas-relief— the colour of Philosophy, vivid, living, rising up, y’all, off the very page.”

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II—Poetry She come with goatskin drum, chattin liberty. She come with skin-ya-alive rum an fat, phat Liberty. Her obeah patois is bond— her talky-talky is bond— delivered with foot-stamping gusto, banjo and bongo, all blues allegro, gumboing oral lore, spicy epics, rhapsodic Rap. Blaze white pages with type’s singeing soot! (To picture her, stonecutters carve fire! To compose her, painters sculpt water!) But hear her speak, as always, for herself: “Call me mean, call me spiteful— because my hands bracket my hips. Call me stuck-up, call me miserable, because I don’t smile on the foolish. “Am I not chromatically dramatic— my Cathay eyes glinting like chrome? Am I not sultry, lustrous, and luscious? “Let your lyrics lust, strut, to illustrate my priceless darkness.”

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III—Poetry Madame Zajj was first Zeferina— a Yoruban warrior weighted down by Slavery’s shadows. In Bahia, Brasilia, she loosed from calaboose, vamoosed to the Urubu (“Vulture”) conclave of livid ex-slaves, craving a Paradise of savvy, festive Revolt. So Zeferina unleashed a cyclone of guerillas— machete-toting men, pitchfork-hoisting women— and rode to sack the City of Salvador and destroy every white face in reach. Alarmed, the Salvadorans scared up an army to sic Terror on Zeferina and her ‘Vandals’. But her troops lunged too soon, But she, brandishing only a bow and arrow, hacking up surprised planters yelled, “Death to tyrants! Long live blacks!” while en route to the city, on Christmas Day, 1826. Bullets came at her but couldn’t hit her. She was a zephyr; her steed breezed lyrical. Her squads of machetes mashed and swished; her Amazon phalanx forked pallid bellies. Still, the slavers’ shots slowly bled them and veered them back— a hurricane returning to the green cane-sea where first it stirred and pooled. Surrounded, Zeferina coolly dismounted, stood disdainfully atop the pale, piled dead, making their reddened bodies her royal dais. Dazzled, Salvadorans had to shout, “Queen!” (Poetry is like Beauty: what remains after dying, after the falling away, when flesh becomes song.)

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I—Reggae In her May-tropics Canada, an Anglo-Saxon lion snoozes beside a zonked, Gallic unicorn in a Garveyite garden— where prances a black “Lion-of-Judah” panther amid ruddy tulips and jade herb transplanted from The Harder They Come, while the Canuck flag blushes scarlet, then blanches white, then blushes red again. Reggae stroll like a Spiritual Baptist— slinky, kinky, a dip in her hip, a slip in her dip, an sprightly, sanctified, wicked: Dub her Beauty Too-Bad. She thrusts her Bible in the air to condemn you. She got ructions Xamaican for glamour, plus Marley roots, plus natty dance, and flaunts, with taunting undulance, a dread, Maroon-style guerre: her each gesture triggers—Checkmate!— the dissolution of the state. “Fall, Babylon, fall! Fall, Babylon, fall! Ya cyaan withstan she gall! Ya cyaan withstan she gall.”

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II—Reggae Time clicks; Rain slicks; Limbs mingle then remix; Pulse quick ticks; Eyes transfix: I love a Black Madonna. Fate acts, Signs pacts; You relax; let night wax; Bards blow sax; Priests face facts; Loving a Black Madonna. No-chance Romance, Choked by distance / Circumstance, Nuns enhance. Let’s slow dance. I love a Black Madonna. *

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Dub Her songs mimic henna—a dusky gold, Hinting of honeyed abysses, chasms Of molasses and cream, where words unfold Chocolate-serenaded, jazz-forged orgasms: “You, you, you, you”— “I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I”— “Please…. Please…. Please…. Please…. Please…. Please…. Please….”

I—Anastacia Ah, Bahia Brazilian, dark buttery, but as tart as lime, Stay no bikini’d Latina scarfin butter tarts and wine, No Ipanema femina, no phantasm of pantomime. Take green tea iced tea, then green tea ice cream. Stroll by that turquoise azure where poets cry, “Ah!” I’ll ink you a bossa nova that drones like a dream, I mean, a samba limbo coloured by Motown and Stax— Sugar Blue, James Brown, Al Green, Barry White: It’ll sound like Naima purred by John Coltrane’s sax. Ms. Mocha Immaculate, you articulate our aches: The gilded elegance of your guiltless eloquence glints, Setting fire to paper and to the poets paper makes. Song goes mad beside you, when I’m beside you, in bed, And we mesh like two sunbeams pollinating blossoms. (“Being With You,” that gospel, serenades my head, With the blues rhyme of the sexes—how we concord So discordantly, slanting, panting, never equally set— Til a wailing poetics overwhelms each sincere word.) Omit droopy tunes, loopy with Lust. Uncork that rum Flavoured by the City of Marmelade, in whose memory L’Ouverture died, starving, hungry for rich, Haitian rum, In that French jail where he regretted his sole defeat. (Splice iced lemon juice and vermilion Brazilian rum: Sip that soupy sap tapped from six centuries of sweat, Saltwater, tears and bleeding!) Anastacia, you’s as bold As gold—no gibberish, no rigmarole! Your pure, Parisian Perfumes transfigure Light—like Dead Sea scrolls unrolled.

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II—Anastacia

So I’m “cranky lookin and sulky, Big-feelin, big-boned, an brassy”? Why not? My ritzy négritude Means no one trifles with me! And if I sashay when I step, as if Each one’s a taut leap of trumpet? Well, my proud buttocks ride high! Why should you mind that they do? A terra cotta woman with cat eyes— Her hair pouring a blue-black sea— My pigmentation is emancipation. I’m geometry: suave and shapely. What is skin but condensed light, One’s bones shimmering like ore? Starlight struggling a billion years To reach Earth matures just in me. I’ll let only that devout worshipper Covet my geography: I’ll leap up, so Indigo. True: I ain’t got no shame. No one’s ever made me hate myself.

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III—Anastacia

Tears splotch often in my coffee now cos I’m always mad in the middle of crooked Love that can’t run straight, bottomless Lust that lasts one night. Harlot him hath my hard-to-get heart. What’s more valuable than my heart? But he ravishes my invaluable heart. He plunders my treasure-chest heart! I can’t change that! No, I, I can’t lie! So I just lie awake under the moon, my bare-naked eye stroked by light: History ain’t nothin’ but trouble.

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IV—Anastacia Butterflies—an ochre choir— plus scared, amber lizards, clambering banana trees, shiver in light— ivory, lime, ivy, lemon, amid a parliament of perfumes…. Here you see a zebra in a bazaar munch marzipan made in Zanzibar. (We could be in Port Louis, Mauritius, if we were not in Recife, Brasilia.) * Anastacia’s mirror shivers, melts, to tender her reflection. The tilting lilt of bangles— angling ankles or listing on wrists— is lyrical as a gal undresses, goes naked as amaryllis, or sashays in a sari, her luscious shush of silk echoing some pacific beehive…. See her Aeolian lips hymn a folio of sonnets, swearing, “That’s good!” See her coral, floral lips saying, grazing upon ghazals, “That’s good!”

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V—Anastacia In antiquity, Anastacia, you acted a basalt saint, lapis lazuli-eyed, a Brazilian slave gal who spurned a pasty massa’s septic, caustic Lust, but still unloosed missy’s Jealousy: That basic bitch accused blameless you of seducing a shameless Satan, like you were their plantation hussy, and she screwed down cruel metal— an iron mask—to scrape your face from her hubby’s sticky, icky eyes, and all you did was weep and starve and beg God to bless two monsters, while Hunger skinned you to bone. Then, massa’s daughter took fevers; she chilled to a deadly, pallid sleep. Her dreaded folk dreaded her dying, but you, dying, pleaded the ill infant be whisked secretly to you. And you whimpered, “God, pleeease heal her!” She blossomed again as you withered. Now, all of Afro-Brazilia’s Amazons tote your noir-iron, blue-eyed visage in lockets and pendants and paintings,

and expect you to cure every horror, to redeem every rickety child. True: Vatican cant cannot canonize you. It brands all your devotees witches. But, your History acts a true masque, a samba that unmasks macabre liars. Your dark-blue-grape-coloured eyes Gaze beyond hypocrisies, and inspire.

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I—Dona Beatrice You, Kimpa Vita, later transfigured as Dona Beatrice, a nganga marimba, or medium, died, but breathed afresh after St. Anthony preached in your reverent skull in 1704 the gospel the Kongo Kingdom must also rise again, that parasitic Portuguese had to go, that pale priests, plunderers, and rapists had to go, that Kongolese must kick em all out. Knowing St. Anthony was Negro and Christ African, you declared the Kongo actual Canaan, and swore God and Mary birthed Jesus in its jungles, that nappy-headed, smoky-skinned Christ bade coconut palms bend down luxuriously so He could crack a coconut and serve His Holy Parents milk while they cameled out of Egypt. Then, you bore a son “immaculately,” damned the crucifix as a torture fetish, and forbade Europe’s corsets and pantaloons as fashions of white-faced Antichrist. No wonder Capuchin clerks caterwauled for your head! No wonder Kongo’s King Pedro IV, on July 2, 1706, had you and child, madonna and son—“heretics”—burned at the stake. Lady Beatrice, you dwelt inside a burned-out cathedral, counted all Catholic saints as Kongolese, and preached Negroid Christ was baptized in the Kongo. You even mothered a fresh order of priests— “Little Anthonys”—crowned with cloth laurels woven from black nsanda bark. But, these patriotic trespasses upon Catholicism got you labelled a diabolical woman and set ablaze.

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Now, you rise perpetually from History’s dry, fallen leaves, as from the pristine leaves of books, bearing that posthumous perfume of elegy.

II—Dona Beatrice Lanterns are your eyes when I seek that Paradise exiles lionize.

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III—Dona Beatrice Kimpa Vita’s a saint who busts skulls— like Beatrice Chancy, like Marie-Josèphe Angélique à Montréal, Québec, in 1734, that slave gal Spartacus who set the city aflame, fled, then got betrayed, trapped, tortured: while a priest calmly watched, she saw her right hand axed off before she was strung up at a gallows, bleeding, strangling, then roughly cut down, gasping, and roasted alive at the stake, her Pain slowly charring to ash. She had to spite History. like Nanny-of-the-Maroons. Any African belle with guts and gumption can be a stump incendiary, a fluid arsonist. Remember Nzinga Mbande; heed Wangari Maathai. (On metal keys, pound out scathing facts— pointed writings, cutting as raw as a blade.) Scrutinize Mary Prince, read Althea Prince, recall Mary Ann Shadd, read Adrienne Shadd, kneel to Belkis Makeba, hear Miriam Makeba, and study Itah Sadu (while hearing Sade Adu): Be letter-perfect uppity and pitilessly indignant.

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I—Oxum

Oxum—or Oshun, a Sanskrit Nefertiti, a sly sylph, does not move; she shimmers—like wine brimming pastels of plum taffy, peach café. Ain’t her eyes port-tincted portals, her lips lacqué à l’alcool de rosé? Pliant, Akan gold sinews her posture— finessed mahogany, fine sable. Ain’t Oxum as flexible and as adamant as handwriting, unfurling like curled lightning, or like calligraphy’s majuscule I, that letter always leaning into meaning? Import your violent, delicious love to her court— so that fire torrents between rocks.

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II—Oxum My karma weds Mahalia Jackson and Millie Jackson. My scripture guarantees rapture. No ‘Colored ladies’ must ever be as mute as wallpaper! (Gown yourself in yelling, gala yellow!) Males bumble like apes in apiaries. Who can explain M.E.N.? Their sex means ‘More Explanation Needed.’ All their cracked craniums be crazy— as if with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, as if jacked up on sildenafil ciltrate. * I repels these lepers: cops of tut-tutting ugliness and by-the-book filth … slumming bankers with sanctimonious briefcases … cockamamie, mammy boys of ‘no-fixed address’ … teary beseechers with unparliamentary speeches … knackers, morticians, economists … unambiguously sordid politicians … men too ‘manly’ to act humanly … and any cabal of banal Calibans. * To hell with their heaven! I like yellow; I love gold; I flaunt regalia. I adore mirrors and their delicious imagery. I push against rock like water pulsing History— what will dissolve even stone.

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III—Oxum

Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates. —Proverbs 31:31

O! Oxum, the electorate salutes you with a gleeful feast of Brunswick sardines, Pampa rosewater, Sunflower molasses, Brown Betty green pigeon peas, Grace guava juice, Nupak curry, Chippie’s banana chips, Sunrise callaloo, Mr. Goudas coconut water, porgy fish, ram legs, tiger shrimp, red snapper, salted pigtails, goathead soup, hot dogs and baked beans, saltfish and salted tequila, sautéed foie gras with apples and Calvados, a honey recipe demanding 80 blossoms of white clover, 40 blossoms of red clover, and 5 petals, diaphanously perfumed, and Red Stripe beer, and Ricardo’s coconut rum, the real, tongue-tactile taste. Don’t every eye gravitate toward your abundance, gal, your pure, arrogant eroticism, so vexedly, dark-complectedly sexy? A good-good eye can taste and savour your ginseng caramel, that mode of Ntozake Shange, yet so much more unnecessarily exquisite, so supernaturally buxom, big-butted, brick-embodied, with cheekbone scarification, maybe, with salsa, sun-sun radiance in copper-bronzed skin, maybe, with pomaded, embroidered, African-Indian hair, maybe, with Noxzema, Pond’s—all those albescent, Negro shades, maybe, and with chaste ministrations, definitely: what classicism demands of surrealism. Oxum, you are beautiful—beyond all photography. To cite you, one weds calligraphy and cartography.

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Daughter of Music Redux (For Geeta) Consider her a maid, a cook, a hairdresser, a nurse, a midwife, a secretary, a teacher, a daycare worker, an actress, a singer, a model, a dancer, a stereotype? Her study may very well be your damnation. So let fierce, honest poets hum her adoration, this shining femininity, now elsewhere out-of-print. Picture her gap-toothed, with unfurled, furling hair, or with hair, deep, soft, sprung, curled into moss, or twirled into braids, or pressed into tresses. Define her as the zenith of Genesis. * Excellence is elusive, as elusive as Music, but this woman orchestrates pure Good that sings. She showers her surplus upon the poor; she opens her cupboards to the hungry. She pours out wine to soothe the sorrowful: Her pleasure government choruses Peace. She steps with Dignity, like any mother, or monarch: her menarche maketh her monarch. Wisdom bejewels her tongue; Truth is her Law; whatever she says, legislates Charity. Charm can deceive; and Beauty is mortal; but a righteous woman sets Philosophy aright. *

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You! You cannot go alone and separate under Heaven. Music will not allow you to go alone and separate. Make love with her so you make song with her. Yes, that’s your duty—your epiphany: To sing.

More Light

A classical people demand a classical art. —Bambara

All praise to Althea Prince and Jack Wayne for licensing these illuminations, and to Ricardo Scipio for the bright idea. Thanks to Boyd Warren Chubbs for the scintillating calligraphy. Light chars within darkness. The models? Brilliant, they adopt the anonymity of archetypes. May blessings rain upon Karl Jirgen of Rampike and Barry Callaghan of Exile for issuing a dozen of the poems / pictures. Thanks to Conny Steenman-Marcusse, of Holland, for publishing a couple too. Primordial talk is black. Akin Alaga, Bob Cooperman, Bernadette Dyer, John Fraser, Camille Isaacs, Oni Joseph, Yannick Marshall, Leilah Nadir, Elizabeth Pierce, Althea Prince, Robert Edison Sandiford, Charles Saunders, and Susan Telfer accorded this book righteous scrutiny. I am guilty, as always, for the oversights, blind spots, and misrepresentations. My chief financial support is the E.J. Pratt Professorship, sponsored by Victoria University and a generous, private benefactor, both aligned with the University of Toronto. I thank the institution and the individual. Epigraphs are from Toni Cade Bambara, Amiri Baraka, Marcus Garvey, Langston Hughes, The King James Version, M. NourbeSe Philip, and Barbara Summers. Song outlasts prose. Illuminated Verses was scribed in Hastings, Barbados; Toronto, Ontario; Paris, France; and New York City, The United States; April-August 2004. It was edited in Calgary, Alberta; Montréal, Québec; and in Sliema, Malta; February-April 2005. Love is just / what keeps us from dust. George Elliott Clarke Toronto, Ontario Nisan MMV

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Signature George Elliott Clarke is the author of the acclaimed works, Whylah Falls (1990), Beatrice Chancy (1999), Execution Poems (2000), Blue (2001), and Québécité (2003), all employing poetry, in narrative, lyric, or theatrical form. His landmark critical study, Odysseys Home: Mapping AfricanCanadian Literature (2002), and his celebrated novel, George & Rue (2005), represent his prime prose. Born in historic African Nova Scotia— Africadia—in 1960, Clarke is the inaugural E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto. His honours include the Portia White Prize (1998), the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry (2001), the National Magazine Gold Medal for Poetry (2001), the Martin Luther King, Jr. Achievement Award (2004), and the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellowship Prize (2005).

Portrait Born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1965, Ricardo Scipio grew up in Toronto, Canada. First attending the University of Waterloo, he encountered and was greatly influenced by George Elliott Clarke while working under him at the student newspaper, Imprint. He then went on to further study at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Ricardo became an international fashion photographer in 1987, working in Toronto, Miami, and New York. He began his work with fine art nudes in 1991, going on to have 14 gallery shows of his celebration of Black beauty—“Uzuri”—in Toronto, Miami, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and elsewhere. This work was first published in Photo Life and then subsequently in many other periodicals. Ricardo briefly retired from photography in 1996 to pursue his filmmaking career full-time. In 1997, he wrote, directed, and co-produced the feature film, When, in New York. In 1998-99, he wrote, directed, and produced his second New York feature film, Watershed. Ricardo Scipio now divides his time between his herbal medicine practice and his artwork. He is currently photographing a second book, The Goddess Project. 73

Round (For Ophelia Callender & Althea Prince) Ms. “St. Louis” Blues & Miz “St. Mamet” Jazz— two dazzling, indigo galaxies— fuse Justice and honey. Cavorting, in splashing jubilee, their fiery blackness sets hyacinthine water alight. Upstart muses, outlandish graces, their negrismo castrates machismo— dull debacles of men, useless with Lust. Such fluorescent, glittering Innocence, panics the seesawing waves. The sparkling spray splits off chips of foam. Amid creosote-dimpled water— la beauté est nue— two strong women stamp up spuming foam, til spray volcanoes diamonds, or throws fire back at the sun. La beauté est nue. To elegize these elect, in illuminated verses, wring lightning from black ink. In saxophone epics, in tom-tom sonnets, sing Love as truly as the word Love is spelt.

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Colophon: This book was typeset in 10 point Granjon type designed by Robert Granjon 1513–89: French type designer, punchcutter, printer, and publisher.