For Kamau Brathwaite at 85

Seven Worlds, by Gary Butte

“Where are the open spaces now
clear sky, the stars, horizons’ distances?”
~ Kamau Brathwaite, ‘The Forest-Masks’

We looked with you pathfinder
into great halls, high spheres
of the seven kingdoms,

and you sang our lives
to memory
before the Golden Stool was lost

when we had our names
and names of the gods

and wombs of strong trees
were oracles under the skin of our hands.
From islands’ scorned syllables
your horn lifted nations’ new tongues

Castries to Kingston
Brixton to Brooklyn
Axum to Kumasi

as they now are. And it
it is now
now the Times of Salt

the age of griots archived
their heads hung in dark corners
their songs obsolete as vinyl

while ballheads of Babylon
deconstruct themselves
over abysses of mockery;

but children
who have not genuflected to Baal
who have remembered again

whom you name from the drum-
beating of your love
come, come, come

with oil of coconut,
bread of cassava, gooseberry wine,
tablets of fruit of your word,  Kamau.

~ John Robert Lee

John Robert Lee is a writer of prose, poetry, journalism; a librarian; and a former radio and television broadcaster. His latest publications are  ‘elemental: new and selected poems,  1975-2007’ ( Peepal Tree Press, 2008), ‘Sighting and other poems of faith’ (Mahanaim, 2013) and ‘Bibliography of St. Lucian Creative writing: 1948-2013’ (Mahanaim, 2013). His bibliography of Caribbean literature is available here.