Poems on the Underground - Black History Month
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Poems on the Underground Black History Month
POEMS ON THE UNDERGROUND FOREWORD
Black History Month Black History Month is a fantastic opportunity
We are delighted to mark BHM with a selection to celebrate the huge contribution our Black
of poems by Black poets with close links to communities have made to our city. London is a
England, Scotland, the United States, the global capital of culture, and I’m proud of the
Caribbean and Africa. The poets include Nobel poetry produced by the authors who live in –
Prizewinners, poet laureates and performance and take inspiration from – our great city.
artists, all reflecting in different ways on their
individual experience. So, to mark this month, the much-loved
We hope readers will gain new insight into the Poems on the Underground programme has
complexities of Black history from the poems released this new leaflet of poems by Black
reprinted here. authors. The verses here complement those
you’ll see inside Tube trains and my hope is that
All the poems in this collection have been all Londoners can take some degree of pleasure,
featured on London Tube trains, reaching an insight and meaning from them.
estimated three million daily travellers in this
most international of cities.
I believe that cultural celebrations like
We are grateful to Transport for London and Black History Month are a great way to raise
London Underground, Arts Council England and awareness about important issues, as well as
the British Council for enabling us to produce bring our communities together. Not only do
and distribute free copies of this leaflet. they strengthen the social fabric that makes our
We also thank authors and publishers for city such a unique and vibrant place, but they
permission to reprint the poems here and on also help to show the world that London Is
our website: www.poemsontheunderground.org Open. Here, we don’t just tolerate each other’s
differences, we respect and celebrate them.
The Editors London 2020 And for me, Black History Month illustrates that
Design by The Creative Practice perfectly.
Published by Poems on the Underground
Registered at Companies House in England Sadiq Khan
and Wales No. 06844606 as Mayor of London
Underground Poems
Community Interest CompanyA PORTABLE PARADISE MOMENT IN A PEACE MARCH
And if I speak of Paradise, A holy multitude pouring
then I’m speaking of my grandmother through the gates of Hyde Park –
who told me to carry it always A great hunger repeated
on my person, concealed, so in cities all over the world
no one else would know but me.
And when one hejab-ed woman
That way they can’t steal it, she’d say.
stumbled in the midst
And if life puts you under pressure,
how quickly she was uplifted –
trace its ridges in your pocket,
With no loaves and no fish
smell its piney scent on your handkerchief,
hum its anthem under your breath. Only the steadying doves of our arms
And if your stresses are sustained and daily, against the spectre of another war.
get yourself to an empty room – be it hotel,
hostel or hovel – find a lamp
Grace Nichols
and empty your paradise onto a desk:
your white sands, green hills and fresh fish.
Shine the lamp on it like the fresh hope
of morning, and keep staring at it till you sleep.
Roger RobinsonBENEDICTION I SING OF CHANGE
Thanks to the ear I sing
that someone may hear of the beauty of Athens
without its slaves
Thanks to seeing
that someone may see Of a world free
of kings and queens
Thanks to feeling
and other remnants
that someone may feel
of an arbitrary past
Thanks to touch
Of earth
that one may be touched
with no sharp north
Thanks to flowering of white moon or deep south
and spreading shawl of black night without blind curtains
holding villages and cities together or iron walls
Of the end
James Berry of warlords and armouries
and prisons of hate and fear
Of deserts treeing
and fruiting
after the quickening rains
Of the sun radiating ignorance
and stars informing
nights of unknowing
I sing of a world reshaped
Niyi OsundareTOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE BARTER
ACKNOWLEDGES WORDSWORTH’S
SONNET ‘TO TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE’
I have never walked on Westminster Bridge That first winter alone, the true meaning
or had a close-up view of daffodils. of all the classroom rhymes that juggled snow
My childhood’s roots are the Haitian hills and go, old and cold, acquired new leanings.
where runaway slaves made a freedom pledge With reluctance I accepted the faux
and scarlet poincianas flaunt their scent. deafness and odd looks my Accra greetings
I have never walked on Westminster Bridge attracted, but I couldn’t quell my deep
or speak, like you, with Cumbrian accent. yearning for contact, warmth, recognition,
My tongue bridges Europe to Dahomey. the shape of my renown on someone’s lips.
Yet how sweet is the smell of liberty
Always the canny youth whose history
when human beings share a common garment.
entailed life on skeletal meal rations
So, thanks brother, for your sonnet’s tribute.
during the Sahel drought of eighty-three,
May it resound when the Thames’ text stays
I lingered in London gares to carry
mute.
cases for crocked and senior citizens;
And what better ground than a city’s bridge
barter for a smile’s costless revelry.
for my unchained ghost to trumpet love’s
decree.
Nii Ayikwei Parkes
John AgardHISTORY AND AWAY SEASON
What we do with time Rust is ripeness, rust,
and what time does with us And the wilted corn-plume;
is the way of history, Pollen is mating-time when swallows
spun down around our feet. Weave a dance
Of feathered arrows
So we say, today,
Thread corn-stalks in winged
that we meet our Caribbean shadow
Streaks of light. And, we loved to hear
just as it follows the sun,
Spliced phrases of the wind, to hear
away into the curve of tomorrow.
Rasps in the field, where corn-leaves
In fact, our sickle of islands Pierce like bamboo slivers.
and continental strips are mainlands
Now, garnerers we
of time with our own marks on them,
Awaiting rust on tassels, draw
yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Long shadows from the dusk, wreathe
Dry thatch in wood-smoke. Laden stalks
Andrew Salkey Ride the germ’s decay - we await
The promise of the rust.
Wole SoyinkaI AM BECOMING MY MOTHER DREAMER
Yellow/brown woman roun a rocky corner
fingers smelling always of onions by de sea
seat up
My mother raises rare blooms
pon a drif wood
and waters them with tea
yuh can fine she
her birth waters sang like rivers
gazin cross de water
my mother is now me
a stick
My mother had a linen dress eena her han
the colour of the sky tryin to trace
and stored lace and damask a future
tablecloths in de san
to pull shame out of her eye.
I am becoming my mother Jean Binta Breeze
brown/yellow woman
fingers smelling always of onions.
Lorna GoodisonDREAM BOOGIE NAIMA
Good morning, daddy! for John Coltrane
Ain’t you heard
The boogie-woogie rumble Propped against the crowded bar
Of a dream deferred? he pours into the curved and silver horn
his old unhappy longing for a home
Listen closely:
You’ll hear their feet the dancers twist and turn
Beating out and beating out a — he leans and wishes he could burn
his memories to ashes like some old notorious
You think
emperor
It’s a happy beat?
of rome. but no stars blazed across the sky
Listen to it closely:
when he was born
Ain’t you heard
no wise men found his hovel. this crowded bar
something underneath
where dancers twist and turn
like a —
holds all the fame and recognition he will ever
What did I say?
earn
Sure, on earth or heaven. he leans against the bar
I’m happy! and pours his old unhappy longing in the
Take it away! saxophone
Hey, pop!
Re-bop! Kamau Brathwaite
Mop!
Y-e-a-h!
Langston HughesMAMA DOT FREE
Born on a sunday Born free
in the kingdom of Ashante to be caught
and fashioned
Sold on monday
and shaped
into slavery
and freed to wander
Ran away on tuesday within
cause she born free a caged dream
of tears
Lost a foot on wednesday
when they catch she
Merle Collins
Worked all thursday
till her head grey
Dropped on friday
where they burned she
Freed on saturday
In a new century
Fred D’AguiarMAP OF THE NEW WORLD: BOM MUMBAI AIRPORT
ARCHIPELAGOES
At the end of this sentence, rain will begin. This far East your thoughts are the edge
At the rain’s edge, a sail. of the world. It will not be the last time
that you walk through a door hoping
Slowly the sail will lose sight of islands;
to return. From your cabin window heat
into a mist will go the belief in harbours
sweats off the tarmac. Think of this space
of an entire race.
like a tree without branches or a wind
The ten-years war is finished. that hides itself till you show your face.
Helen’s hair, a grey cloud. You are not alone you have my voice.
Troy, a white ashpit There is the wind and there is my face.
by the drizzling sea. The man next to you will wake from
his dream with the sound turned low.
The drizzle tightens like the strings of a harp.
A man with clouded eyes picks up the rain
and plucks the first line of the Odyssey. Nick Makoha
Derek WalcottIBADAN THE PALM TREES AT CHIGAWE
Ibadan, You stood like women in green
running splash of rust Proud travellers in panama hats and java print
and gold – flung and scattered Your fruit-milk caused monkeys and shepherds
among seven hills like broken to scramble
china in the sun. Your dry leaves were banners for night
fishermen
But now stunted trees stand still beheaded –
J.P. Clark-Bekederemo
A curious sight for the tourists
Jack MapanjeSUN A-SHINE, RAIN A-FALL VIV
Sun a-shine an’ rain a-fall, for cricketer, Vivian Richards
The Devil an’ him wife cyan ‘gree at all,
The two o’ them want one fish-head, Like the sun rising and setting
The Devil call him wife bone-head, Like the thunderous roar of a bull rhino
She hiss her teeth, call him cock-eye, Like the sleek, quick grace of a gazelle,
Greedy, worthless an’ workshy, The player springs into the eye
While them busy callin’ name, And lights the world with fires
The puss walk in, sey is a shame Of a million dreams, a million aspirations.
To see a nice fish go’ to was’e, The batsman-hero climbs the skies,
Lef ’ with a big grin pon him face. Strikes the earth-ball for six
And the landscape rolls with the ecstasy of the
magic play.
Valerie Bloom
Through the covers, the warrior thrusts a
majestic cut
Lighting the day with runs
As bodies reel and tumble,
Hands clap, eyes water
And hearts move inside out.
The volcano erupts!
Blows the game apart.
Faustin CharlesON THE THAMES THE LONDON EYE
The houseboat tilts into the water at low tide, Through my gold-tinted Gucci sunglasses,
ducklings slip in mud. Nothing is stable the sightseers. Big Ben’s quarter chime
in this limbo summer, where he leaves strikes the convoy of number 12 buses
his shoes in the flat. She decides to let that bleeds into the city’s monochrome.
a room, the ad says only ten minutes to the tube,
Through somebody’s zoom lens, me shouting
I have a washing machine and a cat. The truth
to you, ‘Hello . . . on . . . bridge . . . ‘minster!’
more of a struggle than anyone cares to admit.
The aerial view postcard, the man writing
And everywhere progress: an imprint of cranes
sqat words like black cabs in rush hour.
on the skyline, white vans on bridges, the Shard
shooting up to the light like a foxglove. The South Bank buzzes with a rising treble.
You kiss my cheek, formal as a blind date.
We enter Cupid’s Capsule, a thought bubble
Karen McCarthy Woolf
where I think, ‘Space age!’, you think, ‘She was
late.’
Big Ben strikes six, my SKIN.Beat blinks, replies
18.02. We’re moving anti-clockwise.
Patience AgbabiPROMISE DEW
Remember, the time of year This morning I took the dew from the broad
when the future appears leaf of the breadfruit tree, and washed
like a blank sheet of paper the sleep from my eyes. I saw a blue
a clean calendar, a new chance. sky. The cock crowed again and again.
On thick white snow On such mornings, each deep breath,
clean as new light, is a blessed gift.
you vow fresh footprints
then watch them go
with the wind’s hearty gust. Kwame Dawes
Fill your glass. Here’s tae us. Promises
made to be broken, made to last.
Jackie KayPoems on the Underground Black History Month
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