WORD MAKERS Edited Nathaniel Scott
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And there was one-King Anthracite we named
him-
fetish face beneath French parasols
of brass and orange velvet, impudent mouth
whose cups were carven skulls of enemies:
. ,
knife' wounding flash, Onqucz,
that urly brute who calls himselt a prince,
directing, urging on the ghastly woit.
He hacked the poor mulatto down, and then
he turned on me. The decks were slippery
when daylight finally came. It sickens me
to think of what I saw, of bow these apes
threw overboard the butchered bodies of
our men, true Christians all, like so much je�.
Bnough, enough. The rest is quickly told:
Cinquez was forced to spare the two of ...
you see to steer the hip to Africa,
and we like phantoms doomed to rove the sea
voyaged east by day and west by night,
deceiving them, hoping for rescue,
prisoners on our own vessel, till
at length we drifted to the shores of this
your land, America, where we were freed
from our unspeakable misery. Now we ..
demand, good sirs, the extradition of
Cinquez and his accomplice to La
Havana. And it dis tresses us to know .
there are so many here who seem inclined
to justify the mutiny of these blacks.
We find it paradoxical indeed
that you whose wealth, whose tree of Uberty
are rooted in the labor of your slaves
should suffer the august John Quincy Adams
to speak with so much ion of the right
of chattel laves to kin their lawful maalers
and with his Roman rhetoric weave a hero's
garland for Cinquez. I tell you that
we are determined to return to Cuba.
withour laves and there see justice done.
anquez-
0, let us y 'the Prince' -Clnquez shall die..::'_
E
A charnel stench, effluvium of living death
preads outward from the hold,
. where the living and the dead, the horribly dying,
lie interlocked, lie foul with blood and excrement.
He'd honor us with d m and feast and conjo
and palm-oil-glistening wenches deft in love,
and for tin crow that shone with paste,
red calico and German-silver trinkets .
Deep in the futering hold thy falMr lies,
the corpse of mercy rots with him,
rats eQt love' s rotten gelid eyes.
But, oh, the living look at you
with human eyes whose suffering accuses you,
whose hatred reaches through the swill of dark
to stria you like a leper' s claw.
You cannot stare that hatred down
or chain the fear that Stalks the watches .
and breathes on you its fetid scorching breath;
cannot kill the deep immortal human wish,
the timeless will.
"But for the storm that flung up barriera
of wind and wave, The Amistad, senores,
would have reached the port of Principe in two,
three day at mo t but for the storm we should
have been prepared for what befell.
. Swift as the puma's leap it came. There was
that interval of moonless calm filled only
, with the water' and the rigging's usual sounds,
then udden movement, blows and snarling cries
. and they had fallen on us with machete
and marlinspike. It was as though the very
air, the night itself were striking us.
Exhausted by the rigors of the storm,
we were no match for them. OUf men went down
before the murderous Africans. Our loyal
Celestino ran from below with gun
and latem �nd I saw, before the cane-
dyin .
Would have the drums talk war and send
his warriors to bum the sleeping villages
and kill the sick and old and lead the young
in comes to our factories.
Twenty years a trader, twenty years,
for there was wealth aplenty to be harvested
from those black fields. and I'd be trading still
but for the fevers melting down my bones.
III.
ShUttles in the ':king loom of history,
the dark ships move, the dark ship move,
their bright ironical name .
like jests of kindne on a murderer's mouth;
plough through thrashing glister toward
fata morgana's lucent melting shore,
weave toward New World littorals that are
mirage and myth and actual shore.
Voyage through death,
voyage who chartings are
unloved.
The deep immortal human wish,
the timele will:
ROBERT HAYDEN was born in 1913 in Detroit, attended Wayne State Uni­
versity in that city, then held a teaching assistantship at the Univer­
sity of Michigan. He has received Hopwood awards for poetry on two
occasions, and he has wo fellowships from the Rosenwald and Ford
foundations. He has published H eartshape in the Dust; The Lion
and the Archer, a joint publication with Myron O'Higgins of their
poetry; and A Ballad of Remembrance. A Ballad 01 Remembrance
won first prize at the International Festival of Negro Art held in
15)66 at Dakar, Senegal. His Selected Poems was .published in lifii. His
poetry has appeared .in The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Negro Digest,
and other publications and anthologies. He joined the faculty of Fisk
University in 1946, and is an a sociate professor of English.
Voyage throup dea
to life upon tbeae bores.
Cinquez its deathless primaveral image,
iife that tranafigurea many Ii
, ,
ho
Desire, Adventure, Tartar, Ann:
Standin to America, ringing home
blac gold, bl ivory, bl k d.
D p in the festering hold thy falMr lies,
of his bones New England pew. are made;
those are altar lights that were his eyes.
J us S viour Pilot Me
Over Life' Tempe tuo Sea
We pray that Thou wilt grant, 0 Lord,
afe p ge to our vessels bringing
heathen oul unto Thy chastening.
J us Saviour
"8 bells. I cannot sleep, for I am ick
with fear, but writing eases fear a little
since still my Cfyes can see these words take hape
upon the p ge cl so I wri te, one
would tum to exorci m. 4 days scudding,
but now the sea is calm gain. Misfortune
follows in our wake like harks (our grinning
tutelary gods). Which one of us
has lciUed an albatro ? A plague among
our blacks=-Ophthefmla: blindness-& we
have jettisoned the blind to no avail.
It spreads, the terrifying sickne preads.
Its claws have scratched ight from the Capt.'s eye
& there i blindne in the fo'c'sle
& we must il 3 weeks before we come
to port."
\ What port awaits us, Davy Jones'
or home? I've heard slaves drifting. drifting,
playthings of wind and stoma and chance; their
crews
gone blind, tlu! jungle haired
crawling up on deck:
Thou Who Walked On Galilee
"Deponent further sayeth The Bella J
left the Guinea Coast
with cargo of five hundred blacks and odd
for the barracoons of Florida:
"That there was hardly room 'tween-decks for half
the sweltering cattle towed spoon-fashion there;
that some went mad of thirst and tore their flesh
and sucked the blood:
"That Crew and Captain lusted with the comeliest
of the savage girls kept naked in the cabins;
that there was one they called The Guinea Rose
and they cast lots and fought to lie with her.
"That when the Bo's'n piped all bands, the flames
spreading from starboard already were beyond
control, the negroes howling and their chains
entangled with the flames:
"That the burning blacks could not be reached,
that the Crew abandoned ship,
leaving their shrieking negresses behind,
that the Captain perished drunken with tbe wenches:
"Further Deponent sayeth not."
Pilot Oh Pilot Me
II.
Aye, lad, and I have seen those factories, .
Gambia, Rio Pengo, Calabar;
ha�e 'watChed the BJ1fu1 mongos baiting trap
of war wherein the victor and the vanquished
Were caught prizes for our barracoons.
Have seen the nigger kings whose vanity
and greed turned wild black hides of Fellatah,
Mandingo, lbo, Kru to gold for us.