Fragano Ledgister

chant royal of the scholar and his cat

 

in hidden corner there's a place for sleep
you know it well and will come out to play
in your good time meanwhile you'll let me keep
my larger vigils on this cloudy day
seeking the wisdoms of a time of pain
with half an eye cocked for the coming rain
and senses focused on approaching night
(we know it's coming though the day is bright)
hands put together purpose that is kind
while every heart is poised for instant flight
into the bright dominion of the mind

the lives of people never seem so deep
as feline hungers in their simple way
you are the wanderers and we the sheep
our normal tasks will seem to your delay
from urgent hunger and there is no gain
from what we're doing that seems to you plain
it does not come within your line of sight
provides you nothing of your household right
the sort of thing that is best left behind
lest it should bring a darkness or a blight
into the bright dominion of the mind

your eye is focused on the things that creep
across the yard that you would wish to slay
we know this and for fortune will not weep
but wonder at the words you'd like to say
if speech were given and you could complain
at being bound in by such a golden chain
as if we punished your for our delight
and thought your chiding visions could indict
our cruelty in keeping you confined
but see you move with happy summer light
into the bright dominion of the mind

 

prince you might think this subject impolite
and such debate is not the best to cite
yet we must take the pathways that we find
from your dark rule of chaos and old night
into the bright dominion of the mind

 

 

now back home

 

there's little room for laughter nor for wit
in a beige room with a good downtown view
learning that not all good comes with the new
and breathing in the scents of bile and shit
you learn then all  the signals of hard grit
but night and day someone must turn the screw
the pain will come as much as you are due
and you must sleep now for a little bit
love is sustained upon a sea of tears
though brotherhood itself may seem to fail
in curtest questions still you can draw breath
surprise yourself that you withstood your fears
and are arrived to laugh about this tale
since by a hair you walked away from death

 

 

august morning has come round

so now all clocks are showing the time's passed
for wearing chains and keeping dark heads bowed
since august morning has come round at last

although the sons of hate may stand aghast
we know our parents wept but were not cowed
so now all clocks are showing the time's passed

and we will leave till now we had held fast
but we can show the world that we are proud
since august morning has come round at last

so long a silence then the thunderblast
of our rejoicing we were good and loud
so now the clocks are showing the time's passed

for humble patient service we will cast
away all bondage tear apart the shroud
since august morning has come round at last

with our free hands we sanctify the past
as for the future we face it unbowed
so now all clocks are showing the time's passed
since august morning has come round at last

 

 

chant royal for may day

 

we did not ask for change but still it came
with waving banner and in angry shout
for then our people showed not calm nor tame
but like a flood after long years of drought
that was the moment when the word was rage
that marked the turning of the ancient page
when cities smouldered and when fields were burned
governors fled and parliaments adjourned
in such a time the truth must come in play
the sacred hour of those who once were spurned
who come from darkness into proper day

no one expects the world will stay the same
nor that the light will once again go out
now that all eyes have seen its cheery flame
and minds have been resolved from fear and doubt
by understanding of the proper wage
now to be gained and nothing will assuage
the incensed feelings of the hearts that turned
truly to freedom as the wild waves churned
on the bright shore and we saw the array
of those once vanished who had now returned
who come from darkness into proper day

the story now is not a silly game
nor is it simply nonsense that we spout
about the ending of all hate and shame
now that the old injustice is thrown out
and a new order walks upon the stage
when ordinary folk may shape the age
a better land may some day be discerned
where each achieves the honest pay they earned
and plain respect when their dark hair turns grey
both simple things as far as we're concerned
who come from darkness into proper day

prince we apologise you were interned
your titles stripped and your petitions spurned
your words ignored and servants gone away
but we are with some other things concerned
who come from darkness into proper day

 

 

when mosquitoes come

 

at sunset when mosquitoes come to play

their urgent buzzing games of sucking blood

the darkness comes upon us like a flood

we long for cleansing light of the next day

behind the net there is not much to say

outside the frogs are croaking in the mud

a misplaced word falls now with heavy thud

this is the season when thought goes astray

smoke blends with fog in the short humid night

as all our measures pause within the heat

not one is certain and they all seem wrong

in their slow circle all the clouds move right

over the mountains to a steady beat

and deep within each heart there is a song

 

 

at the dockside

 

we go to meet

the losing side

nowhere to hide

the river’s fleet

 

time has in tow

all our desire

so tell the choir

how much you know

 

out from the port

no ship departs

the while our hearts

each hope distorts

 

choices are made

visions described

policemen bribed

that is the trade

 

so when we learn

just how to speak

in the antique

manner you yearn

 

to see us grasp

all of your pride

held well inside

falls from your grasp

 

what is said true

within these walls

nobody calls

honest or new

 

nothing but old

rumours and lies

that we despise

pass here for gold

 

 

Fragano Ledgister was born in London and educated in Jamaica and the United States. He teaches political science at Clark Atlanta University, in Atlanta, Georgia. He has had poems published in Focus 1983: An Anthology of Jamaican Writing, The Penguin Book of Caribbean Verse in English, and Caribbean Quarterly.  He has also written two studies of Caribbean politics, Class Alliances and the Liberal Authoritarian State: The Roots of Post-Colonial Democracy in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Surinam and Only West Indians: Creole Nationalism in the British West Indies. He is currently working on a study of democracy in 1970s Jamaica. Ledgister is married and the father of two adult children. His latest work, mango-red leaves, is available from Hammer & Anvil Books.

 

 

 

Peter O’Neill

Cinq de Les Fleurs Du Mal

 

X. The Enemy

 

My youth was but a darkened storm,

Lit up, briefly, by brilliant suns;

The atrocious weather, growing up in a bog-

As I did, didn’t exactly help matters much!

 

Now, I’ve reached the Autumn of my years,

And, of course, one becomes reflective –

You go over in your mind, at times,

The old ground, and... which has its graves.

 

Who knows really what will become of one.

The obscure element which constantly eludes,

And which has driven me like a beast, does it still reign?

 

Jesus! But time eats into your life,

And the accompanying enemy which weathers the heart,

Quickens and enflames the blood, and becomes fortified.

 

 

XI.  Sisyphus

In memoriam Michael O’Neill

 

So long as there is some life in the work

Art is eternal, and life itself so very brief.

But to unburden the weight, Sisyphus,

You need a lot of inner strength.

 

Far from Glasnevin, but rather to some

Other more isolated field, heart

You need to go, like some muffled snare,

Drumming up slowly some funerary thread.

 

In such a place, within the emptiness

Of space, within the silence of ‘Be-ing’,

Can be found closer shades to remind you;

 

The scents and screams audible of one-

A secret, but delivered up to you

In such a place of profound solitude.

 

 

XII. Past Lives

 

For a long time I appear to have lived under great gates,

Beneath blue skies lit by a thousand suns,

And whose ancient pillars, Corinthian and Ionic,

Are rendered by the night into grottos of basalt.

 

These swells, weathering imagery solemn

Of scavenger birds and carrion,

With Diogenes laid out and shit stained,

Are reflected back to me in the imagery from newsreels.

 

And it is here, among such ruins, that I have also

Discovered beneath the thunder within the Azure light,

Naked slaves, heavily impregnated with odours,

 

Who keep me refreshed beneath the palms,

And the only sounds I seem to be able to hear are the long

Penetrating sighs, uttered after many merciless pleasures.

 

 

XIII. Travellers

 

Yesterday, they packed up all their things and hit

The open road again, their children packed into vans

And caravans, ready with fierce appetites, while

The mothers look sceptically upon the horizon.

 

And the men, seated proudly at the wheel

Of their shiny transports cram packed with goods

Of every possible kind, like Magi of old leading these

Prophetic tribes, to strike out and follow their own star.

 

The crows, seeing them passing along, caw out

And also take flight in a wing clap of vermillion.

From Anatolia they first came, a riot in lion’s hides,

 

And, cooling rocks, and bringing flowers to the desert,

Cybele, the earth Goddess, smiled down upon them,

Blessing their familiar empire, set in the tumult of the future.

 

 

XIV Man and the Sea

 

Man, free, you will always cherish the sea!

The sea is your mirror; when you stand before it

And contemplate your fate, before its infinite movement,

Your poor mind, brine wracked, couldn’t be more bitter.

 

Yet, you enjoy plunging into the heart of yourself;

Distracted by the immensity before you, and which

Makes you forget, momentarily mesmerised by such

Sheer force, your own apocalypse riding before you, wave bound.

 

You are both just as dark and fathomless;

Man, like the sea, nobody has reached your depths, yet;

Both of you guard jealously your great secrets,

Which you both refuse to give up, without some savage consequence.

 

For innumerable millennia you have both now been struggling

With one another for survival, both just as pitiless,

Both of you loving, as you do, carnage and violence.

O you two blood brothers, eternally vying...

 

 

Peter O’ Neill (1967) was born in Cork where he grew up before moving to live in France in the nineties. He returned to Dublin in 1998, where he has been living ever since. He has been writing poetry since the eighties, and has been published in reviews in Ireland, USA, UK and France. His debut collection Antiope (Hammer & Anvil Books, 2013) was critically acclaimed: ‘certainly a voice to be reckoned with.’ Dr Brigitte Le JueZ (Dublin City University). With over six collections behind him, he is currently translating Les Fleurs Du Mal. 

 

 

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