Digging Down Jamaica

Digging Down Jamaica

John Maxwell


The story of Nauru, the world’s smallest island nation fascinates me,
which is why I keep referring to it as an horrific  example of
unsustainable development. One of my readers complained that I hadn’t
really told you much about Nauru, except that it was about to disappear
beneath the waves because of rapacious strip mining and global warming.
So, let us look at Nauru. It’s very hard to find, being slightly less
than half the size of Kingston Harbour. It is a coral island to the
east of New Guinea and almost directly on the Equator.

Most European navigators seemed to have missed Nauru in nearly 300
years of “discovery” until a British sailor stumbled upon it in the
1830s. The Germans annexed it with the approval of the British in the
1880s, when Europe and the USA were busy carving up the world like a
birthday cake. Soon, it was discovered that the island consisted almost
entirely of phosphate – the fossilised excrement of seabirds –  and
mining began. By then alcohol and western improvements had taken their
toll. An internecine war began among the 1,500 or so islanders which
ended when the population had been reduced by one third and two of the
twelve original tribes were extinct.

Mining consisted, as in Jamaica, of scraping off the topsoil and
sending it to Europe and America and the world. The phosphate was used
to fertilize corn, rose gardens and sugar cane. Phosphate mining was so
profitable that by the 1960s Nauru’s GDP was second only to Saudi
Arabia’s – but GDP doesn’t translate into money for ordinary people as
we in Jamaica know from bitter experience

Nauru was running out of phosphate. By the time the Nauruans realised
that they needed to do something about it, it was too late. They set up
a trust fund to invest their income from phosphate, but within 20
years,  by the end of the twentieth century, Nauru was for all
practical purposes bankrupt. A brief try at offshore banking (money
laundering) was put down by the international community. 

Bankruptcy is not Nauru’s only problem. The bling and kitsch of the
glory years produced unhealthy eating habits and today, Nauru has an
additional claim to infamy: it is the world capital of toxic
malnutrition. Because of poor diet, alcohol abuse, and unemployment,
Nauru has the world's highest level of diabetes, kidney failure and
heart disease, affecting 40% of the population. Sounds a little like
Jamaica don’t you think?

 Global warming and climate change will produce sea-level rise that
will one day not too far off, swamp poor denuded  Nauru and make it
vanish beneath the Pacific. There will be no evidence of the crime.


‘… threaten the Existence of Man Himself …’

The short unhappy saga of Nauru is a microcosm of globalisation and its
effects. As Jamaica’s National Environmental and Planning Agency says
in its guidelines for Environment Impact Assessment:

“The production of goods and services to meet global population demands
has occasioned a number of activities which have depleted the globe's
natural resources and in several instances contributed to environmental
degradation through pollution. These activities done in the pursuit of
economic development have also caused the loss of several species of
plants and animals and now threaten the existence of man himself, if
left uncontrolled.”

Humanity came to that conclusion in 1992 when the world’s leaders,
including  P. J. Patterson (accompanied by a gaggle of Jamaican
environmental experts) signed the Treaty of Rio. That treaty, known as
Agenda 21, charted a new course for the sustainable development of the
people of the world, including Jamaica.

Last week the  Gleaner was reporting that Windalco, formed when Marc
Rich bought out Alcan, is to invest $3 billion Jamaican in a plant to
produce quicklime in Jamaica. Windalco uses 300,000 tons of lime
annually and substantial tonnage was imported despite local installed
capacity which should be able to produce the stuff. Windalco didn’t
want to go into the business originally, but the decision was a
no-brainer since “75 percent of Jamaica comprises high quality
limestone…” and ready to be turned into dollars.

As we look up from Kingston to Wareika Hill we see it disfigured not
only by by the Cartade favelas but by the enormous wounds left by the
cement company’s limestone and gypsum mining. In Duncans, near where I
was born, the hillside topsoil is underlain by prehistoric coral reefs,
solid limestone. After sixty years, the wound remains from the US Army
Air Force construction of the Braco aerodrome – when I was a child.
That quarry, near Silver Sands, seems to have been one of the sources
for the roadbed of the Northcoast Highway – a superfluous and arrogant
example of public irresponsibility.

Windalco correctly understands the nature of Jamaica and its
development-apparatchiks. West of the Wag Water Jamaica is either
limestone or bauxite. The island is ripe for Nauru-isation.
Elements of the government bureaucracy obviously think so too. They
seem to have a plan which envisages a Jamaica divided neatly into five
sectors:

• A highway sector, capable of hosting international sports car racing,
as in Monaco;
 • A housing sector, built on any available piece of public  land,
whether farmland or wetland or biological hotspot e.g.; Kennedy Grove;
Portmore; Harris Savannah.
• A tourism sector, built on public beaches and walled off from the
Jamaican public, who will under globalisation, now pay for the
privilege of bathing in their own sea or even viewing it and having the
same rights in Jamaica as would Appalachian hillbillies.
• A bauxite sector, which in pursuit of the sacred ideal of wealth
creation for Foreign Investors,  will destroy whatever acreage  is left
by the other three sectors
• A Human Resources sector, trained to provide suitable labour for the
other sectors, composed of people with no urge to create anything, no
need to wonder at the grandeur of nature (there won’t be any) or to
speculate in the fertile wildernesses which provide room for the soul
to roam. They will be born without souls, after suitable genetic
modification.

There will be nothing to research, nothing to discover, nothing to
amaze or awe, except American and Japanese “killer” video games, and,
most specifically,  nowhere to dream. Sound systems will take care of
that.

I forgot, there will be a Religious cum Entertainment sector to deal
effectively and efficiently with whatever is left of our children’s
minds and stop them singing “All I want for Christmas is an M-16.”


Sustainable Development is about people, not things. 

As I write on Wednesday, I have been informed that representatives of
the Cockpit Country Stakeholders Group have been politely received by a
Governmental Ministerial subcommittee on Mining which seems to want to
understand why there is so much excitement about their plans to ravage
the Cockpit Country – the Land of Look Behind.

As I suspected, the Ministerial subcommittee was more interested in
technical matters than anything else.

The subcommittee members present were  Minister Roger Clarke, Minister
Anthony Hylton,  Minister Donald Buchanan,(internittently) Minister
Dean Peart, Minister Victor Cummings, Minister Phillip Paulwell (came
late), the Attorney General AJ Nicholson, Parris Lyew Ayee from Jamaica
Bauxite Institute and Clinton Thompson, Commissioner of Mines, Rohan
Michards Ministry of Agriculture, Leonie Barnaby Ministry of Local Govt
and the Environment. 

Three lawyers, one farmer, one trade unionist, one supermarket
operator, one sociologist, the technical head of the Jamaica Bauxite
Institute and  three civil servants. No one representing the nation’s
so-called “National Environmental Protection Agency”. Obviously, our
environment does not need protection.

Aside from the fact that I differ profoundly from my fellow
stakeholders in the CCSG on the business of boundaries, I really do not
believe most Jamaicans are really concerned about boundaries at this
time. What people on the street and on the internet tell me is that
they want to keep the mining industry out of the whole of the  Cockpit
Country, which a great many regard as a sacred piece of Jamaica. 

Most of those I have spoken to are outraged that anyone could even
think of mining in the Cockpit Country – as a former very senior civil
servant told me in the pharmacy two days ago. He was very angry. So are
a lot of other people.

 The Land of Look Behind is sacred for many reasons – one of them being
that in its silences are shrouded  the bones of all our ancestors,
brown, black and white – Taino, African and European. The Cockpit
Country was the seedbed for revolution and the spark for abolition. 
To the coupon clippers and the margin gatherers, the Land of Look
Behind represents nothing  but foregone profits. To the rest of us it
represents not only our history, but our future, a future which will be
foreclosed by reincarnated Henry Morgans, and  Blackbeards – the
“Chainsaw Al” crowd and the other modern freebooters of globalisation,
people without souls, representing entities without conscience,  intent
only on making the last piece of profit out of the last piece of human
dignity. 

I and many others to whom I have spoken do not want the Cockpit Country
to be a kind of reservation behind valleys of destruction and the ruins
of mountains, hills, culture and history. 

 It is not simply  our duty to defend the Cockpit Cpuntry, but it is
also our responsibility to hold the mining interests and the Government
to their responsibility to tell us the truth and to justify their
indecent assault on a national treasure. The NRCA law demands that
accountability and no regiment of lawyers can give Alcoa or Marc Rich a
‘bly’.

The kind of enterprise proposed for the Cockpit Country has no
boundaries in its ambit of destruction. An alumina refinery just
outside the Cockpit Country will mortify the lungs of schoolchildren
and adults and of livestock, kill trees and poison the groundwater for
nearly half of Jamaica. It will destroy the birds, butterflies and
fireflies that are part of the magic of the Land of Look Behind. 

Aluminum is the world’s most abundant metal and its production the most
environmentally destructive.

 And Jamaica is a very small, very precious country.


Can We  Afford Bauxite?
If you want to know what bauxite has done to your country, go to
Marlborough in Manchester to see how it has devastated the national
shrine for Norman Manley, or to the area round Alexandria and Aboukir
in St Ann or Mocho in Clarendon. Ask the people of Ewarton or Hayes
Cornpiece or Fanti Lands about their asthma, their corroded roofs and
dying fruit trees,their contaminated water and the broken promises and
lies of the bauxite companies.

If you want to know what bauxite holds in store for us, read what the
experts have to say in reports by Basil Fernandez, Head of our Water
Resources Authority, Dr Jasmino Karanjac, former Professor of
Geomorphology at the UWI and the US Army Corps of Engineers. 

Fernandez reports on the extensive pollution of  underground water
resources by bauxite mud; Karanjac believes that we will soon be forced
to distil water because of a impending shortage due to industrial,
mostly bauxite pollution; and the US Army Corps of Engineers is certain
that we cannot afford three million tons of red mud a year from alumina
refining.
Having read those statements – all reported in this column over the
last few months – ask yourself why is  it that the people who want to
protect Jamaica’s environment are being asked to justfy their position?
 Ask why it is that no questions are asked of  those who wish to take
indecent liberties with our landscape, our history and our souls?

Ask yourself why, although the regulations clearly specify sanctions
against non-compliance with the Mining Law, bauxite companies have been
protected from the logical effects of their lawbreaking for fifty
years?

Ask yourself why we can’t make an honest living from the lands now
occupied by sugar? Ask yourself why any government should be able to
steal public beaches from the public and disregard our  prescriptive
rights?  Ask why, though the regulations prescribe  Environmental
Impact Assessments, the mining companies are never asked to obey this
section of the law but allowed free-range islandwide to destroy the
beauty, the health, the future prosperity  and the tranquility of the
people of Jamaica?

The current Guidelines for EIAs (published by the NRCA in 1997) say
that it is the people who should decide whether environmental impacts
are or are not major and that the local communities including NGOs, the
business sector, service clubs and citizens association and others
should be invited – in writing – to take part in the process. 

NEPA cannot legally, hand over its responsibilities to a developer such
as the Jamaica Bauxite Institute.

 NEPA cannot decide what sections of the law it should obey.

 If we are a nation of laws, the decision as to whether we will dig
down the Cockpit Country is a decision to be made by all the people,
because it is their property, their patrimony and the place where their
soul finds refuge.

When the Maroons spoke two weeks ago,  they spoke for a majority of
Jamaicans. If you don’t believe me, just ask the next person you meet.

As I said a few columns ago, we are all Maroons now.  

Or, perhaps, Nauruans.

Copyright©2007 John Maxwell
jankunnu[at]yahoo.com

Five little known things about me

Abi has tagged me with the meme: Tell five little-known things about you.

I really don't have anyone to tag, and don't want to (that's why I just rejected the same meme, in another place, when my younger son tried it on me). Nevertheless, here goes:


(1) I was on my school's quiz team for four years in a row (1969-1973). As a result, when I last had my passport renewed, I was able to point out to the person who was certifying the veracity of my existence that he had known me for 28 years.

(2) The only musical instrument I've ever played was the triangle. I was terrible at it.

(3) I once stood beside Tuli Kupferberg at a urinal.

(4) I have a niece and a nephew who are Scots. (This number will change shortly.)

(5) I know two women who have been kissed by Fidel Castro.

walkabout

straight on the road in july tropic heat
i've got a bag i've got a little cash
i know i'm going to get home very beat
that what i'm doing is a little rash
i haven't enough to make the dash
by bus or train it's rough out on the isles
i've no plans nothing's going to clash
tomorrow i'll have walked fifty hard miles

the idea seemed simple clear and neat
i needed money needed a small stash
to find some work not to admit defeat
i wasn't going to let my hopes go smash
the solution was to go and use my wiles
back home the long hard road to bash
tomorrow i'll have walked fifty hard miles

there's no reason at this hour to repeat
all that i saw there was no sudden flash
i crossed the plains the sun fell to his seat
i had no money had no secret cache
my only currency was nods and smiles
i wished for water could not get a splash
tomorrow i'll have walked fifty hard miles

prince i would warn you not your teeth to gnash
but keep this record safe within the files
i made the journey got my little cash
tomorrow i'll have walked fifty hard miles

forced march

what tells us when the journey isn't done
that there's a long way still so far to go
our feet upon the road are far too slow
behind the distant building sinks the sun
what's hidden there we cannot hope to know
we can't keep up we soon will lose the glow
and walking through the dark is not much fun
the distances seem greater and the weight
of worry about what do do when sleep
sits heavy on the eyes there's naught to do
but to keep going for though it get truly late
rest has to wait till we our meeting keep
we've no choice now we've got to make it through

Welcoming a poet

There's no duel here, although we all are wits,
so welcome, Sandy, to the rhyming crowd;
we're raucous, boisterous, always a little loud,
but heaven knows we do what sense permits
and no more than that. We'll occasionally blitz
on tea and coffee, and, frankly, we're allowed
to rhyme our hearts out, keep our heads unbowed
in this place (better than any beaches in St Kitts).
It doesn't matter whether you drink tea,
or even coffee (I'll concede that much),
as that you bring some friendship to the table.
With humour, sense, and kindness we make free
this is a place where we can leave the hutch
(or workplace) and find freedom through the cable.

jamaica española

they colonised the spaces made them strange
to those who had been there who promptly died
about their predecessors they freely lied
not them but providence did things so arrange
the place was theirs now their own sweet grange
to which by nomenclature they were tied
a place worth defending with the most saintly pride
a place of sugar and spice where cattle range
what would they have become if left alone
if they had not in their turn been displaced
into what sort of folk would they have evolved
we can't tell they might have come to atone
or might their consciences have misplaced
but into faded memory they've all dissolved

For A.S. on Making Light

Abi has got it, I think, mostly right
about the way that sub-threads intersect,
we're here to learn, communicate, connect;
the final product? This is Making Light.
All of us here are smart, well-read, bright,
we're not the prisoners of some closed sect
(except for knitters, if I may interject),
and you'll find us here any day or night.
Science fiction, politics, the cost of thread,
on all these topics we'll expatiate,
we're in a Symposium, an intellectual feast.
With effort each turns away to earn some bread,
somehow we get there, never running late;
and hamsters serve as our heraldic beast.

riding the air

where the words come from is inside the heart
the music comes from there and from the mind
the shaping can be tough but not unkind
each phoneme each sharp echo plays a part
in showing artlessness made out of sweated art
though some would say we do not make but find
reality is that we struggle each day half-blind
pretending that our efforts make us smart
yet when the words come we can't stop the flow
they know their purpose know just where to fit
and we're the mediums there to give them voice
no thought is needed they've some place to go
constraint comes on us as soon as we sit
at desk or table we're never given choice

beam me up

good ways to travel now there are not few
but instantaneous that's the way to go
i head to broadway for the latest show
and after to hawaii for the nicest view
of sunset then to ireland for the dew
of morning somehow one would know
to whom we would this sweetest blessing owe
to have the world as neighbourhood that's new
to call this journey beam or call it spring
does not now matter it's the swiftest way
to travel in the most connected times
far swifter than the aerodynamic wing
the world to survey in a single day
and then to praise in carefully-picked rhymes

For Serge Mailloux

One can be prolix, or one can be terse,
it doesn't matter which approach you take
unless you seek with every word to break
from plainest prose into the finest verse.
It would be better (nothing could be worse),
if you seek a simple poem your own to make,
to plunge in deeply, for, make no mistake,
you want your carriage not to be your hearse.
Now, having said this in Italian rhyme
I make a turn (or volta) to inform
you of the options currently on view;
you've got to work hard to avoid the crime
of violating a long-established norm,
but what you get will be shiny and new.

victory achieved

you drop a man you want his neck to snap
and this is justice this is what crime pays
the hanging is a sign of coming better days
and that the greatest cannot beat the rap
their feet will dangle through the open trap
and laughter serves to cover up the daze
of those who just yesterday would praise
the dead man all their principles are crap
you fight a war to punish just one man
for daring to defy you daring to reject
your vaunted power and such a one must die
you win your battle then find there's no plan
to do the things you wanted to effect
the whole dark enterprise feeds upon a lie

stars and a cuppa

we travel in our minds beyond the stars
the planets circle fast in the mind's eye
in our imaginations we see the scars
of damage made by beings above the sky
of this we're certain for we cannot try
with our bare hands to keep our planet free
we sip from our small cup we wail and cry
and then we get our strength from honest tea

we've sailed a distance seen the ghostly spars
of flying dutchman that is sure no lie
we've watched the light of that red planet mars
and wondered if we could in its air fly
the dreams of burroughs those we cannot buy
with barnes or robinson we might just agree
someone will get there we're certain by and by
and then we get our strength from honest tea

each day the lone commuters in their cars
think as they watch the same old roads go by
of those who're telling stories in the bars
and trying to see through ray bradbury's eye
the martian stories as if from on high
from cluttered minds they now clear the debris
to mars they'll go they know the reason why
and then we get our strength from honest tea

prince or princess when you the future spy
from your high place in the great tall world-tree
with our aspirations you will soon ally
and then we get our strength from honest tea

On fairtrade for Abi Sutherland

Abi, when it is time for you to bake
a little something for some celebration
remember, if you will, the situation
of those who grew the spices that you take.
Those who love fair trade often only make
their choices about drinks, no cerebration
is needed, yet I have the strange sensation
they don't think of what goes in the cake.
The hard, dull work of reaping all that spice
done for low wages (or, in my case, none)
gets no attention from the cognoscenti;
they don't think of the effort or the price
of all that sweating under tropic sun;
those who earn so little should get plenty.

Wisdom and tea

I plan my next class on good Master Kong
with the fine aid of a large mug of tea,
my thought and planning had been all at sea
but with the warming cup I find my song.
Had it been coffee, all would have gone wrong
my mind would have been hasty and not free,
out of my thinking would have come no tree
of knowledge, shaped perfect and strong.
The warming spirit that the soul revives,
that comes to us from out the mystic East,
gives us assurance to both think and act;
from its kind impulse all that's good derives,
it is the guardian sprite at every feast
and leads us always towards truth and fact.

at the end

some news will frighten though it must arrive
other news comforts frankly from the blue
the observances the things we know are due
matter the most to those who stay alive
and from this fact there's little to derive
we reach this place and find we have no clue
of what comes next we're limited in view
but know our purpose must be to survive
examined in this way it cannot really matter
whether we come or go nor what we say
until the moment comes when we must act
or else stand idle letting all things shatter
despising those who do not share our way
but never knowing what is lie or fact

tea is the drink

Tea is the drink that more than merely cheers
but doesn't make you drunk or falsely proud,
it speaks in whispers but its voice is loud
yet unlike coffee does not end in tears.
To win approval of one's friends and peers
never requires the plaudits of the crowd
but a strong sense of what should be allowed,
and mugs of tea till it comes out your ears.
Coffee made strong will give men heart attacks,
its bitterness could rival that of gall
and heartburn is its truest consequence.
So give us tea, and be neither slow or lax,
for coffee's pleasures are so quick to pall;
tea is the drink for all folk of good sense.

in my cups

Bach sang of coffee, for he music made
and that swift jangly rush hit a right note;
I write of tea, for my less urgent trade
allows me on the slow warm rise to dote.
Caffeine's in both, we know that to be true,
and in both gives us that aura of power,
but tea is better, that's the honest view,
although its making takes up half an hour.
Teas that are green, or black, or even white,
teas full of flavour, teas with tang and nerve,
teas with an attitude, teas with a real bite,
these from my regular course will make me swerve.
I hold that we can't judge a people free
unless over harsh coffee they praise tea.

ready for action

shades keep out the dark
winter whips the trees outside
too short the daylight

preparing again
to explain the simple truths
that keep things working

no reason to wait
yet the desire of wisdom
may still have allure

Meme of evil

You paid attention during 97% of high school!

85-100% You must be an autodidact, because American high schools don't get scores that high! Good show, old chap!

Do you deserve your high school diploma?
Create a Quiz

anticipation

new stories for old this pattern takes us places
familiar and strange the day could have been worse
but no one came prepared with book and verse
and tomorrow we know we will start the old races
tempted though we are just to kick over the traces
dismiss the nonsense with a loud sharp curse
and flee but we need to put money in the purse
and keep on smiling with these tired old faces
i have to remember what is in which file
what names fit faces and what faces return
to reanimate the struggle all that is old renews
and we will keep on going for another while
and hope that minds will one of these days burn
with desire to know and see some stranger views

having a clue

where the answer is not simply given
but taken almost by brute force
things departed from the normal course
reality and dream suddenly riven
by those who had not long striven
with untrammelled fury no remorse
in their hearts lacking all source
desperately desiring to be forgiven
the turn that comes at the road's end
is half-expected but every surprise
is treasured even by the haughty
the voltaic surge at the final bend
seen only by those folk with open eyes
almost a shock but never really naughty

forty years on -- after novoneyra

the birds that marked your death were shrieking bats
we might not see their like for a whole year
their voices gave us the news that we did fear
of heroes turned up dead after the last combats
brave men despised far worse than stinking rats
youth charm and hope that filled the mountain air
lie dead and bloody now beyond all human care
while the nameless hunter with his masters chats
heroes die like ordinary men the andes did not sink
when you stopped breathing though overhead the birds
chant lamentation for the passing of their kind
we know that afterwards vast seas of purple ink
will be expended over you that a new war of words
will explode in your name as you lie dumb and blind

only the numbers ever change

the factor that's not included in the account
is a small number but means quite a lot
is life and hope and pain and all forgot
and larger than the principal is its amount
we could in justice simply do a count
and see fall into place each single dot
the pattern clean not even the least blot
while second by second the digits mount
almost to the stars or so the numbers seem
that are observed by all the grey-faced men
whose job it is to see all figures match
even in their plain eyes there is a gleam
at seeing how the values combine again
into a hook that will the punter catch

the day seems old

in the pale light no shadows can be seen
the sun is densely wreathed by a thick cloud
only the music seems alert and keen

with little wind the thin trees do not lean
against each other in their little crowd
in the pale light no shadows can be seen

this weather is the kind that aches the spleen
we pass each other with our bodies bowed
only the music seems alert and keen

not noble but submissive is our mien
on this dull day a fool could not be proud
in the pale light no shadows can be seen

even the grass has turned a pallid green
this day we feel was made to wear a shroud
only the music seems alert and keen

the lethargy's not abolished by caffeine
constricted are the limits of the allowed
in the pale light no shadows can be seen
only the music seems alert and keen

back at work

not too soon the warnings of fresh cold
the winter comes upon us in a rush
yet here we still have one moment of hush
while the low sky seems grey and old
the sheep have not come back into the fold
outside the grass no longer green and lush
the heavy air my oppressed sense will crush
and nothing seems to flourish but the mould
still beyond pain the news is not all bad
changes begin and who knows where they'll lead
not long before the days again are bright
the weight of duty does not make me sad
instead i seek the pleasure in the deed
there is much time before the return of night

a wider hell

the choices that we make are always hard
but guns and butter that one should not be
as difficult even an aristocratic fool can see
that few wars are worth the young lives marred
and the kindred sitting outside in the yard
weeping hot tears that could fill up a sea
then there are those with minds and bodies scarred
we see them begging on the winter street
their rags of uniform no longer the clean proud
symbol of a democracy with values of bright gold
in each face there's a personal defeat
that tells us volumes though not one is loud
and all they ask is shelter from the cold

inspired by pondal

i dreamt i heard the bells
from a place deep in the heart
the memory simply quells
the pain of being apart

the breezes that once i greeted
are far-off and nearly forgot
in this space the air is heated
and outside it is even more hot

the thoughts of defeat and of prison
were far from the joys of my youth
to conquest i thought we had risen
but otherwise turned out the truth

in joining the great expedition
i'd thought i'd be making a change
in this tired world's old condition
but now that seems too strange

to have been thought or desired
by anyone of normal sense
but young men are heavily wired
and to reason's pleadings are dense

to listen to falsehoods and wheezes
while thinking of glory and gain
is to leave behind the fresh breezes
and embrace the heat and the pain

the moon that rides there in the sky
is the same moon of young love
but here i regret that the lie
rose so much higher above

any thought that war meant honour
instead of destruction and death
at least i'm not yet a goner
but measure the cost of each breath

the pain and the noise and the heat
one could take if there were a chance
that from the despair and defeat
humanity at least could advance

but no one's seen where the power
to link every one to the whole
has vanished in this hateful hour
of decency's opposite pole

the days of brief triumph were magic
but they may not come by again
the ending is bound to be tragic
and that is both painful and plain

do not in the time that's remaining
assume that the evils are past
somewhere the foul hounds are training
and this fight will not be the last

the value of speeches is zero
that's one thing i have learned
the speaker is just a false hero
and victory still must be earned

so now in the heat of this prison
i sigh and i wince and i moan
the moon in the east is now risen
and my heart is dead as a stone

a moment of truth

in the quiet afternoon each rumble of the train
vibrates in rhythm with an excited heart
not knowing that this marks the newest start
of a life measured in both stress and strain
but now there may be a chance to do things plain
each place has been a sojourn in no part
of land or building was there stake or chart
of more than passage mere shelter from the rain
dignified it is true by old and honoured name
but not possessed not held not to be defended
with life and force a mere transitory scrim
against raw nature no cause given for blame
when no security that could not be ended
at will but now the heart rises and the eyes dim

senior thesis

all you have to do is tell a simple story
not like gossip not all in a single breath
as if you'd burst or catch your death
if you didn't hurry it is no old or hoary
tale although it may involve whig and tory
more likely it will tell of aids or crystal meth
or more violence than mentioned in macbeth
but this may be your first step towards glory
there are some simple rules that you need follow
that make the tale coherent and sensate
but they are but the frame within which you
will fill out what would else be just a hollow
shape not just with fact number name and date
but bring a realm of knowledge into view

unnecessary learning

you lay out the rules and they appear to hear
but take no note after all this is hard work
and there's no pay for it much easier to shirk
the responsibility now the future is another year
and we haven't reached it yet who could care
about what's just some random teacher's quirk
for accurate communication a simple smirk
is all the judgment that one needs to bear
witness to the fact that one is not here to learn
but to get a degree and the best possible grade
that can be achieved with no effort that is all
one wants there's never any need to burn
the midnight oil and all learning will fade
meanwhile one waits for the latest squeeze's call

a hopeful villanelle

all times cohere when hope announces spring
when brown becomes green when leaves renew
we look for blossoms we hear the birds all sing

all the exhaustion all of the dullness we bring
from winter deep fades now from thought and view
all times cohere when hope announces spring

the bells no longer sound leaden when they ring
though cloudy still the days of cold are few
we look for blossoms we hear the birds all sing

on every side the trees now brightly fling
fresh odours into air the long grey days are through
all times cohere when hope announces spring

the world fills up with colour fit to adorn a king
the bees seek nectar to make their sweet dense brew
we look for blossoms we hear the birds all sing

with leaves and flowers the year completes its ring
from birth to death and birth's again in view
all times cohere when hope announces spring
we look for blossoms we hear the birds all sing

not quite ronsard

when you are old and under the fluorescent light
you tell the tale of all those long-gone days
you'll say as you recite my half-forgotten lays
once i was loved by a young poet bright
but no one hears in that late conquered night
who knows my name it seems almost a craze
for the old to remember their friends with praise
but you should not go down without a fight
rather you had when time and chances were
have seized the moment and taken the love
then offered and not affected the pose
of arrogant disdain that was then your year
you could have been the sweetest cooing dove
instead you spurned the single offered rose

the last bright glow

if there were light to illuminate our hearts
what would we find and would its name
be one that could be uttered without shame
or would we hurl at it the swiftest darts
that we could create by alchemic arts
if only so we could avoid the blame
that would accrue if then we did not tame
our shades and spirits in their proper parts
to do obeisance to the final master
of all our doings the one who just commands
and sees it done the way that seems most right
although it leads us only to disaster
we each of us must take our proper stands
and wait with patience for the fall of night

the art of conquest

who giving names would think before to ask
whether the name's appropriate or desired
instead the namer finds their purpose mired
in talk of politics and while he'd rather bask
in the glory of dicovery the need to do the task
makes it imperative that every person hired
and every place that's found be properly attired
in definitive nomenclature for that's the mask
that power gives itself the naming of parts
and wholes and people places things that skill
marks off the ruler from the ruled and gives
raw muscle and hot guns the aura of fine arts
it does not matter how many folk they kill
so long the remnant obeys while yet it lives

before morning

to know there's someone there in deepest dark
to hear the breath to feel the body's heat
these all matter and as each day we greet
each other in the morning before the early lark
has taken flight each of us sees the mark
of our affections and as we each repeat
our daily tasks the memory remains sweet
of our deepest feelings of our emotions stark
and bare before each other of the sense
that time's forgotten as long as each is here
the warmth enfolds us holds each in their place
together alone there's no need for pretence
of anything but truth there's never fear
instead the air is immanent with grace

the common good

our choices come from reason not simply from rote
we're beings with minds and choices must be made
things must be bought and wages must be paid
our doings may be ordinary but still we have to note
why we have done them by what will and whose vote
the decisions are arrived at for when all has been said
it's choice and planning that will make the grade
and all our options every single case must have its coat
and under such fair cover achieve what ends it can
since nothing ever makes it to the most desired goal
but still we have to live and for that must remember
that most work's not done by those who in the van
gain the applause each part must make the whole
a single flame else we decline into a last pale ember

Getting there

sonnet with skirt

each step seems shorter and the time has come
to work things out to do all that we'll need done
in a short period now we almost wish the sun
would run its course with greater speed the sum
of all our desires is now before us and the drum
is beating ever faster as we wait now when we run
the race has greater purpose we can't shun
the consequence of thought that would be dumb
now days soon hours the way ahead is clear
there's nothing that we've missed or have forgot
and naught that should be taken as a strain
on all our efforts now this is the appointed year
the moment when the tab fits in the slot
and when what's irrelevant is minor pain

the answer comes that when we've made a gain
in the small battle where the greatest fear
is that we'll give it up that our own souls' rot
would make us abandon all for which we care
just at the moment when we've filled the pot
with all our hopes and sheltered from the rain
we take new steps and our tired spirits rouse
but we reject the fear we'll take this for our house

the other battle

the play's not just the thing we have to catch
more than a king's conscience the very sense
of justice that is shared and the dense
network of meanings for now we must match
our nearest rivals and then contrive to snatch
victory at a time when the most intense
emotions are rising and when no pretense
of anything but truth can in this place unlatch
the secret heart that enmity would bind
to do us hurt and still to crush our hopes
while others laugh and cheer loudly when we cry
in pain for mercy and who with words unkind
applaud when we've been forced back on the ropes
those who are sorry that we don't just die

against the philistines

the shape of words should not we think matter
the meanings the significance and all that
have all the import all things else are the blat
of horns and the random music of the patter
for communication is just prettied-up chatter
and everything like the whole world is flat
and that's all right for all talk is just chat
and all discourse is no more than simple natter
the thought of this should freeze the simplest mind
for all the magic that we have is in the words
we utter and their varied shapes are not mere
arbitrary choices our nature's not that unkind
nor are our letters the plain flight of birds
we speak in hope that some at least will hear

beyond mere words

there's no reason to hide the thing or name
it at as another there's a hidden sign
or symbol that we see below the line
where it is safe or at any rate is tame
the whole thing's just a dull and dismal game
the answer's not in proclaiming the divine
power of silence but the heavy brine
of tears reminds us that there is no shame
in all the acts that we do out of need
to build or break or to define or mark
the bounds of what is right and what is ours
we've seen the answer hidden in a seed
of true significance snatched from the dark
by what are in the end just human powers

civil society

each state of nature seems a horrid place
we are confronted with our natural selves
the judgment of the entire human race
requires a civil order well-arrayed shelves
with lawbooks regulations decrees of court
the sayings of the wise men and the kings
with commentaries not a single one is short
all saying that the beast needs leading-strings
the choices seem too many a common force
that takes each of us into a combined whole
that speaks for all that sets for each the course
that they will take that makes clear the role

assured that public greatness makes each great

as masters or as servants of each state

the music leads to dreams

the weather is pleasant enough for a nice walk
the road is not too hilly and the way well-known
it seems like almost spring flowers already blown
and music that's more reviving than mere talk
no one could deny this not a one could balk
at seeing things that long ago were shown
at higher speeds yet now we've seen the bone
of trees the signs inscribed in coloured chalk
from eye-height as we pass along the way
on this suburban street just minutes past
the hour we were expected happy to be late
giving due reverence to the pleasure of the day
and knowing that the die will soon be cast

the object of research

i seek in words the weavings of the state
to say what is and what is not in clear
terms to define and show that what is dear
is what we made so there's not need for fate
to justify what happens at each date
the signals travel quickly through the air
yet all that happens turns out at last unfair
the facts and values slowly aggregate
we draw the maps and measure out the space
the roads are clearly marked so are the hills
the rivers show up in the brightest blue
and yet we find that now we cannot trace
how much it cost and who paid all the bills
but now a greater reckoning comes due

advancing on steady legs

we walk together with the flute and pin
no bones about it that is just the way
while rod and arm provide us means to win

on all fours with the law's the way to spin
just how we got here on this sunny day
we walk together with the flute and pin

with two in tandem we know to begin
the masses move together in array
while rod and arm provide us means to win

the music has its source somewhere within
the heart that leaps at sunset in the bay
we walk together with the flute and pin

the song's wind-blown there is no violin
can carry this tune melancholy and gay
while rod and arm provide us means to win

we beat the rhythm out on willing skin
and as we go still do we yearn to stay
we walk together with the flute and pin
while rod and arm provide us means to win

to be loved alone

the desire that hides at the centre of each heart
for all to love us and most to feel despair
at being unknown unmet and for the fair
light of each day to be a sign of individual art
what happens when we accept the given part
is not a spread of sparkles through the air
nor yet the fox running to hide in his lair
for fear that we will launch the fatal dart
instead there's the unassailable hard fact
that though we're each alone we're in a crowd
and every face is ours with some distort
to live each day requires some form of tact
steps that are quiet a voice that isn't loud
and recognition that this is all in sport

Desacralisation

If there's a god or spirit in each tree
and life's a long sacramental procession,
there's never need for action or progression
for we're surrounded by things we cannot see;
yet when we're in our own house's lee
the wind that's random shows us no succession,
instead there's progress and there's retrogression
and every stream finds no rest in the sea.
We live in time, with knowledge that it ends
for each of us, that we'll be no more there
than all time past. So we give our hopes a form
that comforts us, and so each mind pretends
that flesh turns to spirit in some upper air.

the train goes by

the numbers change but the message does not
the names are different but the end's the same
we turn to the latest iteration of the game
and find that there's still something we've forgot
there's no reason to go on but to avoid the blot
on each escutcheon for failing would be shame
so we march on though every foot be lame
to halt or waver would be the first mark of rot
the stars that fade in early morning are signs
of faintest hopes held alive in deepest dream
the bus that's late delays but does not halt
the journey we've been given the plain lines
and know that what's there is no moonbeam
still the sea is made of tears we taste the salt

a true vocabulary

the words that give life meaning are not long
the vocables of normal congress all quite short
words such as hope or peace or of a meaner sort
like hate or fight all measure well for song
or make things clear words like right or wrong
are perfect and direct we accept the report
and judgments given gravely in life's court
cannot include only those which are strong
but must allow each carefully to speak
of those things which we all know will matter
before the dimming of each little fire
none but the soft the yielding and the weak
can bend in time always the mighty shatter
and all the time we listen for the lyre

almost dreaming

shadow on the wall
a flying ship caught mid-air
creeping upward flight

through the trees blue sky
clarity of winter light
yet warm is the day

another country
speaking over internet
time's perfection

Ten Questions

Geoffrey Philp has tagged me with a meme. So I'll play along. Perhaps I'll even learn something.


Question one: Why do you write poetry (or literature) at all?

Why does one breathe, or walk, or eat? When I write, writing is an necessary as air or food, or sex, or sunlight. What surprises me are the long years when I didn't. I write because I feel the need so to do.

Question two:

What is your favourite poem? You know, the one you'd have loved to have written, the one by whose standard you base all other works of art. If your life depended on answering this question, what poem would you suggest to the person holding the knife to your throat?

That's a question with no fixed answer. There is a universe of poetry that I love. But of the subset that I wish I'd written, Shakespeare's Sonnet XCIV ranks high. If I could write a long poem, I'd want it to be something like Walcott's 'The Schooner Flight' (as I write those words I think of Rachel Mordecai and I chanting together 'I'm just a red nigger that love the sea,/I have a sound colonial education,/I have Dutch, nigger and English in me/and either I'm nobody or I'm a nation'). Yeats's later poems also speak powerfully to me.

Question three: According to you, what is the state of poetry today? Is poetry flourishing or dying?

Both. Poetry takes a variety of forms. Some of them are constantly dying. Others constantly being born.

Question four: What kind of poetry (or literature) do you dislike, and would not consider buying?

Anything by Rod McKuen. Anything by some half-arsed 'celebrity' who thinks that a slim volume of poetry will give them credibility. Anything that's badly written.

Question five: Between the styles of Come (by Makhosana Xaba) and word speaks (by Kojo Baffoe) which do you prefer? Care to tell us why? Obviously, Makhosana and Kojo aren't required to answer this question.

I find the flow of 'word speaks' much more appealing, and much more like my own work, than 'Come'.

When the Muse deigned to visit me again, I found myself drawn to formal modes rather than free ones. I've written a lot of sonnets over the past year, and quite a few villanelles, a few haiku, and some ballades.

Question six: What was the last poetry book you bought?

The Penguin Book of the Sonnet by Phillis Levin.

Question seven: Where do you go for poetry on the web?

Nowhere. I don't look for poetry on the web.

Question eight: Do you talk poetry (or literature) with friends and family? "Hi honey -- Hey, I read this incredible poem today.

In a word: no.

Question nine: What one piece of advice would you give to a beginning poet (or writer in general)? What would you tell them to do or not to do?

I'd suggest they go to what set me to writing back in my teens: The Faber Book of Modern Verse.

Question ten: What line comes to you after the following two verses (in other words, please write the third verse -- these are spontaneous lines from me and are no part of any poem I'm writing or will be writing).

When the light from the lantern
beamed and fell upon the child,
I smiled and shut the bedroom door

More progress

january spring

with just a view of trees and birds and light
we can construct the frame of paradise
that will withstand even the longest night

we must make sure that we can do things right
the limits of mortality we will despise
with just a view of trees and birds and light

we know right here and now the bright
days of this mild winter are not mere lies
that will withstand even the longest night

the sunshine on the wall seems to requite
the pain and suffering that upset our eyes
with just a view of trees and birds and light

defiant leaves with fresh colour will ignite
winter it seems has donned a new disguise
that will withstand even the longest night

in this mild weather we all take delight
nature we know has given us a prize
with just a view of trees and birds and light
that will withstand even the longest night

what can be expected

things come together
not with sudden noisy force
but slow and silent

the darkest morning
is still busy and fervent
with rushing workers

the turning earth hides
the sun from sight but cannot
truly dim its light

the gold of life

it won't change the fact that the sunlight cheers
to say the day's been cold and the wind rough
these are the merest civilised veneers
that keep the mind alert and clear and tough
what happens when the weather at last turns
will matter at that time not one moment before
each day gives us the things that hard work earns
and we will all the harsher parts ignore
not for us now the messages that warn
of stranger times and things we cannot know
but that we will without compunction scorn
the things that are no more than lively show
what happens when the sun heads down the hill
is of no import in full we've paid the bill

no coral reef

it is no more than a small misery not to eat
for hours and to stay calm while the thirst
rises within you but that is not the worst
it seems like each hour is a new defeat
you wait and wait and the results that greet
your eyes provoke no great outburst
and you think in the night this is the first
of these exercises over time there's more
and each involves the same humiliation
the weakness that the mind seems to imprison
you hope in vain for that now longed-for shore
but in the meanwhile you fear discorporation
but later you'll feel better when arisen

gift poem for garnet-43

i read the funny verses once again
the smile that comes is thoroughly benign
the poem does not cross the well-known line
between the piquant and the reader's bane
the north pole's not located in far maine
but that's no reason there shouldn't be a sign
directing folks to father christmas' shrine
for children some things are very plain
the pictures show a quite discerning eye
the comments a presence that's kind
the writing brings to all a pleasant smile
we see the mountain against the big sky
the tension in each moment will unwind
in pleasure at the elegance of style

gift poem for SitkaReign

the measure of a work is if it's read
by which i mean that there's a reader known
whose presence is by some measure shown
who gives my words some space in their head
from person to person the word is spread
the language is stripped down to barest bone
and given its utmost clarity of tone
without the silences of empty dread
to thank you for your presence is my theme
though who you are i cannot ever tell
it's good to know that someone is out there
to share my thought and meaning is the dream
and in the vast expanse there's a deep well
from which the living water comes out clear

gift poem for opheliatunis

what happens when you want the time to pass
and give the best of what you have to give
to show that there's a reason here to live
is that the magazine will have no class
and the editor will turn out to be an ass
still when you need the cash you won't misgive
and the sense of opportunism you'll forgive
when the limits of those times you surpass
another place another time another city
you'll write of pirates and of other times
and social memory will become real
the answers that you give will be quite witty
and heroes be indicted for their crimes
for history's a court with no appeal

gift poem for nefrekhetperi

had cecil's plan come to its full fruition
you'd jump at once on cape-to-cairo train
instead from that long journey you refrain
and since his fortune went to pay tuition
for bright young sparks of notable ambition
rather a handsome garden you maintain
of native plants that thrive on little rain
it seems a major part of your life's mission
the bitter aloe's green translucent heart
would seem a symbol of both hope and life
its liquid essence making some things clear
the lily's swordlike presence plays a part
each leaf a soft and succulent green knife
and there's a freshness in the southern air

ballade of the tired commuter

at some stage in our travels we come to the place
where in our journeying we change our train
for quite another where the term rat race
becomes in our eyes nothing more than the plain
statement of a kind of incandescent pain
that defines the normal human situation
still we're dry and warm and not out in the rain
and five points will be our next station

our tired beings move through time and space
each day the dragon of hard work is slain
we're in the hunt though victims of the chase
a dense dark fog seems to enfold each brain
from all this suffering not one can abstain
the whole thing marks a working life's duration
the truth of this each of us will maintain
and five points will be our next station

nothing it seems will from each mind erase
the memory nor end the bitter reign
of that which keeps our hearts from true solace
and treats each moment with a high disdain
we've got to work not one of us could refrain
from carrying out this quotidian operation
we're constantly engaged in this campaign
and five points will be our next station

prince we can't continue in this vein
when calm and serenity seem the abberation
life should be more than sweat and strain
and five points will be our next station

the casual mention of risk

what frightens me is that the day is fine
there's a light breeze and signs of fresh green
life shooting out of the wintry earth i've been
on a journey and now i must toe the line
go under and let the dread powers combine
to mark my passage see what must be seen
and indicate to me the proper mien
that i should show what actions i refine
into some better form what signification
life has had till now the utterly natal
condition that what makes the human being
is part and parcel of our destination
it's being born you see that's truly fatal
and knowing this is just my way of seeing

grasping at words

lines form and reform as i fall asleep
i see all poems having perfect shape
but when i wake up i have to scrape
my vapid mind for words that keep
their meaning and that in the long deep
moments of thought do not attempt escape
but come together as if from a tape
put together by some beings that creep
out of the dark and steal all inspiration
returning nothing but the dark again
and filling all my head with empty clouds
yet in those hours of deepest respiration
they indicate their presence without pain
but when i wake they all turn into shrouds

ghost story

no shapes defined but still we see a shape
there is no form but still we make it be
there's nothing there but we can see
the way it moves the way it fills a cape
we see it dance we see it bow and scrape
and still we wonder how we find the key
to all these visions why they do not flee
they are we think but mere forms of escape
and yet when we have written what we know
the shapes remain and keep their glowing form
we've not a choice but to accept their being
something else must remain for we must show
that we know how they deviate from the norm
and how they fill the spaces of our seeing

the blindness of theory

it's enough to make a volcano blow its top
to listen to fool after fool tell himself lies
while each thinks that he has won the prize
bringing all other thought and theory to a stop
but if we can find within each concept a drop
of simple sense we'd praise it to the skies
instead we shake our heads and rub our eyes
and wonder how trained minds produce this slop
nothing that we do can ever be fine enough
to meet the standards that we set in our heads
but still we try to show that our thoughts matter
in this line of work the thinker must be tough
must overcome his natural fears and dreads
and ignore the eternal sounds of thoughtless clatter

returning from new orleans

not for us the unlimited rage of wind and rain
thunder yes and ordinary rainfall but no more
we came and saw and paid the normal score
but this place seemed like any other it was plain
that what was here was just the human strain
but things were not as they had been before
this seemed to be the case but there was no sore
expression no anger though it would all occur again
the primary giveaway were roofs all of them new
on houses new and old and most definitely ratty
and the plain account of how it was to flee
the wind that came and the sorrow it was to view
the ruins after and how it drove people batty
but hope cannot be drowned yet in the sea

Dishing the Dirt

Dishing the Dirt

John Maxwell

Disasters in Iraq, Haiti and Jamaica

As some of us predicted several years ago, Mr George W. Bush’s policies have now hit the fan. It may be instructive to go back and read what Wayne Brown and I were saying four years, three years and two years ago. You may not have to do that, because what we said then is now being echoed in some sections of the American press.

The murder of Saddam Hussein was a given. According to Mr Bush the US was engaged in a crusade – which correctly defined, is Christian action against unbelievers. He withdrew the word, but the policy lingers on. As a President appointed not by the voters but by God, according to one of his generals (Boykin) Mr Bush is clearly not answerable to any earthly authority, His Shia allies in Iraq are similarly unencumbered by human considerations of justice or law.

According to Mr Bush and his obedient poodles in the british government, Hussein got “Justice” and it is not for ordinary mortals to consider the parameters of that Justice. After all, Saddam “even tried to kill my Dad!” which justifies junior in all his excesses.

American Presidents since Reagan have all been accomplices of Saddam Hussein in the crimes for which he was charged, the crimes against Humanity in Jubail, Kurdistan and Iraq. The Americans, british, French and Germans supplied the apparatus of death, the tactical information, the materials to make the poison gas and even the opportunity for Saddam to do his dirty work.

Additionally, there is no qualitative difference between the US and UK-led sanctions regime which killed more than half a million Iraqi children,the present war which has killed nearly a million Iraqi adults and and the bulldozers which buried thousands of Iraqi soldiers alive towards the end of the Gulf War. Messrs George Bush Sr. and Clinton are in eminent retirement as is Mr Rumsfeld, while Messrs Cheney and Bush Jr are still at the head of American affairs, doing their damnedest for the sake of American corporations and oil. And Mr Blair? well, what can anyone say of Mr Blair?

The millions of demonstrators like me, who carried signs reading “No Blood for Oil” and found ourselves described by the New York Times as the world’s other superpower – Public Opinion, knew then, as we know now, that the real world of realpolitik pays no attention to the messages of the people whether delivered in English, Arabic, Urdu or any other language.

All that is left to us is the power to try to shame the malefactors, not the power to try them for their crimes. Pinochet died in his bed as have most of the western sponsored “Sons of Bitches” – to use Franklin Roosevelt’s language.

It is savagely ironic that a majority of Iraqis now consider the regime of Saddam to have represented the “Good Old Days” – when they could go safely to the supermarket, when their women were in Parliament and free to walk abroad and work without the threat of murder and rape because of the manner of their dress.

For Saddam, whatever one thought of him, one can say that he met his end with dignity and even, perhaps, nobility. He refused to be humiliated from the day he was captured, examined for American TV by American veterinarians – or so it seemed – for the delectation of corpse-chasers like Larry King, whose itchy-fingered deathwatch in Baghdad did more to disgrace the profession of journalism than anything since the Judith Miller scandals.

In all of this it is the behaviour of the American press that has been most disgraceful. They have acted as the Judas Goats leading a substantial proportion of Americans into nothing less than disaster and they, as much as Mr Bush, Mr Rumsfeld and Mr Cheney, are responsible for the 50 thousand Americans maimed and 3,000 killed in Iraq and the looting and desecration of eight thousand years of human history and the resurgence of the theory that might makes right, as Adolph Hitler used to say.

Disaster in Haiti

The visit of the Haitian president, Mr Rene Preval to Jamaica is a poignant reminder of the failure of Haiti’s closest neighbour, Jamaica, to do anything over more than a decade, to come to the assistance of eight million of our brothers and sisters who inherited the hatred and revanchism and racism directed against the slaves who abolished slavery.

It was in Haiti that plantation slavery in the western world was destroyed. It was Haiti which caused the doubling of the size of the United States by forcing the nearly bankrupt France of Napoleon Bonaparte to sell off off most of what has since become the southeastern and gulf states of United States.

And it was France and the United States, chiefly, who beggared Haiti into insolvency by, trade embargoes and extortionate blackmail. The United States refused to relax its embargo on Haiti until France had re-established relations with its once enslaved colony. France, as a condition of recognising Haiti’s blood-won independence, demanded and got the modern equivalent of $25 billion in blood money extracted from the ex-slaves. When the Haitians couldn’t pay, United States’ banks lent them the money, and when they couldn’t repay that, the United States invaded Haiti and imposed a regime as bad as slavery and which, in addition, devastated Haitian forests and agriculture, leaving the proud Haitians reduced to the destitution and misery which they suffer today.

At this moment, the Haitian people have managed to elect a President who is tolerated by the United States as long as his predecessor, Jean Bertrand Aristide remains in South Africa.

The United States is acting in protection of the elite interest, the ‘high-yallers’ and other mainly mulatto ruling class and its Middle Eastern proselytes who have been given the franchise to run Haiti on behalf of the United States.

This means, for instance, that President Preval and the Haitian people are not masters in their own house, and mercenaries from Brazil, Jordan and other non-Caribbean states are the armed forces of Haiti. They are the real rulers, free to go into the poorest areas and murder and arrest whoever they thinks supports Aristide and wants him back. These mercenaries are also free to rape and murder Haitian women and children under the benign auspices of the United Nations, as decreed by three eminent Uncle Toms: Kofi Annan, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.

It is time for Jamaica and Caricom to awake to its sibling responsibilities and duties. If it weren’t for Haiti and the Jamaican Maroons, the slave trade and slavery might never have been abolished on the West indian plantations. It would have continued at least until slavery was abolished in the United States, Brazil and Cuba, decades after it was abolished here and more than half a century after the people of Haiti asserted their wish to be free and made that freedom real – or so they thought.

Our brotherly responsibilities go further, because the flag of Haitian revolution was raised by none other than the Jamaican Maroon – Bouckman, a survivor of the Taki rebellion.

The Land of Look Behind

On Thursday I was the keynote speaker at an assemblage of Maroons convened by the Council of Overseas Maroons –COOM. The conference was attended by Maroons from here and abroad and by distinguished scholars, foremost among them Dr June Besson, a ‘brown’ Jamaican, Reader in Anthropology at Goldsmith’s College in London. Dr Besson has been studying Accompong Maroon culture for nearly two decades and she has written and is writing about what she has found. She is a fierce defender of Maroon autonomy and the principle that they have a culture which should be respected and made known to the world.

Also heard at the conference was the solemn pledge by the Colonel, Mr Peddie and from his deputy, Harris Cawley, who may not see eye to eye on everything but are united in the resolve that no mining will be allowed in the Cockpit Country.

This resolve was also brought to the meeting by representatives of the 75, 000 people whose livelihoods depend on or are situated in and around the Cockpit Country.

On their behalf I would like to suggest that those who wish to rape the Cockpit Country for bauxite, limestone and bituminous coal, should come out and openly state their intentions, if they believe that they are honorable and would survive public exposure.

The Cockpit Country is the last refuge for the Jamaican soul, the last clean, un-messed up part of Jamaica, and millions of us, some who have never been there, regard the Land of Look Behind as a sacred and intrinsic part of our patrimony and heritage.

Since the government wants to know what our objections are to the despoliation of this biological, anthropological, geological and environmental treasure we would suggest that in fairness to the Jamaican people, the prospective predators must be asked to present all the information they have available so that the real owners of the Cockpit Country, the people of Jamaica, can decide in open discourse, what we want done.

And, with due respect to the unions and their 5,000 bauxite workers, I would suggest that emotion, feeling, sensibility and respect, are the key elements of any decision to be made about a sacred place. And I won’t even remind them of their part in ensuring that Jamaica exacted a smaller take from the aluminum companies, even as those companies were and are planning to give us, free of everything but cancer, asthma and polluted water, the gift of three million tons of red mud every year for the next twenty. What is contemplated is an indecent assault on our heritage and our Jamaican soul, and it must be resisted at all costs.

Come on chaps! You too have the right to be heard in dis yah democracy.

Copyright 2007 ©John Maxwell

jankunnu@yahoo.com

A new semester

The regular schedule will soon be resumed.
It's back to teaching, back to the same looks
of bland frustration, the same avoiding books
that causes grades to fall. It can be assumed
with safety, that the average student's doomed
in writing to babble like an endless set of brooks.
There will be plagiarists, those stupid crooks
who'll find their standing will have been consumed,
as flunking the course becomes their new reward.
Others will make the effort, really want to learn
and see the world with better informed eyes.
And some will think that because they have scored
a place in class they won't have need to turn
a page, just at semester's end plague me with lies.

the lesson of life

This is the way it is, the universe does not care
whether we live or die. All we can do is advance
step by step, day by day, taking whatever chance
comes our way, seeking all over the sphere
where life has placed us something that will adhere
when we have ended our turn at the dance.
Still, as we move towards the last great stance
after which comes nothing, towards that last year
when all that's done will be done, and no more
prizes sought or lost, we'll give ourselves the praise
for all the garlands won, for the heroic verse
we've read throughtout our passage. There is store
of such, and plenty of false hope for final days.
This is the nature of life and the great universe.

homo in excelsis

at some point the boundary between human and machine
will start to fade the way that county lines dissolve
before the urgent need to banish crime the minds revolve
from image to image in panic sifting scene from scene
in turn electron supplants organ then meme for gene
exchanges place then the reverse the process will involve
no instant transformations rather new parts will solve
each problem as it happens nothing will have been
permanently changed though mind will now speak to mind
without the mediation of charged words instead we'll see
a gradual acceptance that the difference doesn't matter
and never should have we'll just see that human kind
includes machine parts that relieve old age that we will be
just what we were as long as self-delusion does not shatter

listening intently

if there are messages they've passed unheard
the stars remain quiet in the immense sky
but what their music is their own pained cry
we cannot know we have not the magic word
our senses flee us frightened as a bird
from the enormity of dame nature's lie
our own five senses the great truths deny
the dream is crushed not simply deferred
instead pale light and the thin ghost of spring
give us some home the cycle will renew
but each turn of the wheel means destination
is that much closer and the end will bring
for us a peace but no return to view
we have inside ourselves the true salvation

remembering tropic night

what we have in this city is not real night
the lights outside guide feet but hide the stars
i can make out the colours of parked cars
but not the milky way that creamy light
stretching across the sky creating a huge bight
empty in contrast with what seem small scars
of brilliance against silky black or reddish mars
aloft at deepest dark truly divine in might
or venus on horizon at fresh dawn
proclaiming coming of the sun's new reign
like a bright sapphire in the morning sky
each luminary seeming the airy spawn
of a great power one who would not in vain
proclaim a sacrifice or falseness sanctify

awaiting sunrise

appointing the time
for right action and making
is no proper way

instead of waiting
in darkened rooms full of dread
enter the daylight

no imperative
outranks the urging of life
but can suppress it

a place not visited

we fly faster than time into the nearer west
our thoughts run faster also alas our nerves
what happens to us there we hope serves
as a means of building a stronger nest
and meeting in our way the harder test
yet from our minds the lightbeam curves
around the image suddenly it swerves
and seems to illumine a place of rest
at such times when we wish to organise
our thoughts into some coherent shape
nothing seems to fall right into place
and when we come in turn to criticise
our own attempts we find there's no escape
we judge ourselves the losers of the race

finding a way

at times the way can seem an abrupt slope
a hill too steep for anyone to climb
a monstrous eater of our too-short time
too much for us to understand or cope
too short for the allotted length of rope
that we've got nor can we just prime
this pump without eliminating grime
still we can move and that can give us hope
the mountain cannot daunt the careful eye
nor can it frighten the determined man
the task is not too tough for honest backs
those who discourage only tell a lie
and there's a way if we have the right plan
nor can we all our wisdom and sense tax

false spring

we know the winter will quite soon return
but for the time we've got we greet the spring
the sun itself in its fresh joy will sing
and for the proper time of year must yearn
but yet we know that we truly cannot earn
the right to all the joys this warmth must bring
still we will with zeal just guard the ring
that holds in place the warmth and gentleness
nothing that we can do will hold back time
but still we want the sun itself to pause
to bring a halt to all our restlessness
to banish time and aging as a crime
and subject us to kinder softer laws

inspiration

it's not as if a spirit comes before you
and tells you let me in and i will guide
it doesn't know the way and beside
lacks any sense of perspective of view
there isn't some group of chosen few
who know the secret of the moving tide
all of us are along here for the ride
and everyone knows how to make the new
the truth is that each one can read the map
but not enough of us will walk the path
and only a few will choose the rightful way
too many prospects fall into the gap
and far too many fear an aftermath
but some will still go fearless into day

before the journey

what we have done is less than we could do
the way to overcome is never short
but how we do it when we find our port
is not the thing that's easiest to view

in all the ways that we account as sport
do not the marks of victory deny
for what from this perspective we descry
may change appearance once we have it caught

when from the hands of fate the truth we pry
what does it matter if we then forget
all these affairs which led us to regret
with sun's appearance we reject the lie

we know reality in hard ice is set
that can be melted and again refrozen
if we refuse each time to take the chosen
still every deadline will at last be met

winter will end and then the final frozen
shards will to liquid and to summer turn
the time will come when all of us may earn
the prize of patience and the drink ambrosian

and yet with inner heat we will in winter burn
the last of our old selves to cleanse the new
all of our hopes we believe will come through
and for that consummation we now yearn

having a heart

at times the pressure gets too much to bear
then you must grit your teeth and try to smile
the process always injures those who care

what happens to our loved ones far or near
requires that we adopt a certain style
at times the pressure gets too much to bear

the truth is that you fear for those who wear
their hearts out in the open for others' bile
the process always injures those who care

then in the end they'll only come to stare
at the wreck of all your fortune what a trial
at times the pressure gets too much to bear

when you get to the boiling point they'll tear
your heart out full of laughter all the while
the process always injures those who care

to answer in your passage never spare
the ones who most will profit from their guile
at times the pressure gets too much to bear
the process always injures those who care

who after us still live

villon wrote ballades all those years ago
about his friends the members of the gang
who were we learn not at all slow
to use the knife as a quite literal fang
to set free the trapped blood the sang
of honest bourgeois on the unlit street
then wipe and polish the besmeared tang
the money goes to those who are most fleet

we who've come after cannot really know
what songs the hardworking thieftakers sang
or how and in what words they chose to crow
we know that villon when about to hang
asked pardon for his crimes but after clang
of slammed cell doors he danced on airy feet
his death came with a whimper not a bang
the money goes to those who are most fleet

still we can see that his creations flow
like all the wine of which his ballads sang
and we believe that he made a brave show
when paying for all those whom his blade stang
of terror he would have shown not a pang
but claimed to be prepared the judge to meet
when from beneath his feet the trapdoor sprang
the money goes to those who are most fleet

prince i ask pardon for this long harangue
these are not times to be calm nor discreet
around your neck they yet may place the cangue
the money goes to those who are most fleet

a reason to rejoice

mild winter means just this an april afternoon
at the new year yesterday it poured for hours
a true downpour no understrength brief showers
but from the warm gulf like a great monsoon
still for the nonce there's no need here to swoon
at the bright day and the clear view of towers
the warmth that tells us that old nature's powers
to kind and gentle things are not immune
now what we have is sun and warmth and cheer
good things as we prepare for obligations
left at the pause and for the further reaches
of all the tasks that have fallen to our lot
we're not the masters of all situations
but experience is wise and sometimes teaches
that force alone cannot undo the knot

beginning and ending

we're calm and steady not the flighty men
we've been portrayed as not the sons of fear
our courage has been tested year by year
and will be we don't doubt it once again
but nothing now and certainly back when
we were young can overwhelm or scare
who once have gone into the higher air
of action who have seen the monster's den
beyond this point only the toughest go
but sons of heroes have not need to test
what's known already that the greatest fight
is with the heart and with the teary flow
that comes along with pause to breathe and rest
but none will go unhonoured into night

New Year 2007

The year begins with warmth and lots of light,
the year went out with dark and heavy rain.
We say these things in order to explain
just how the change comes, in order to do right
by all that's past and all will be bright
in conception, though we still will strain
to overcome the normal wear and pain.
Each sunny day's a sign that the long fight
has some real purpose, though we cannot tell
where we are going yet we forward march
towards the objective, to what we hope to get
for all our efforts; we'll pass through hell
itself to reach our goal, pass through the arch
in triumph. Above all, we will not forget.

after the rain

the creamy light reflects from whites and greys
upon the trees the leaves are glowing green
this is a wondrous steady quiet scene
auspiciating what should be finer days
if the pleasure that holds us in place stays
and things turn better than they have been
the breeze that's blowing softly seems to mean
more than its import which is gently cool
but time moves onward with a steady step
and nothing matters until it has gone
yet anyone who'd falter is a fool
if he or she thinks only of their rep
and not of whether the struggle's really won