Self-Portrait by Dixon
POEMS by Mac Donald Dixon
BIOPSIES OF HATE
Don’
ask me Uncle Sam why everybody hate
you wid a rage dat mek dem want to spill your guts
wid
a two edge blade in de middle of the street
mass
produce like me in a third world country
dat
don’ have to roll dem ars to speak.
Fifty
years you stranglin’ a little nation; but
dey
call your bluff. You try to brek dem up
in
stocks and shares—smuggle rights to their rum,
cigars
an’ everything else you dip your hand in.
I
don’ start to speak yet. Don’ forget we not friends.
Your
moose-boys saddle their B52 to bomb
a beach where sand fly is king. You frighten
already?
Not
by chance you bounce up wid our beloved
In-Fidel.
Wid your contraband of pills, and every
other
brand of vice you sow discord on foreign soil.
You
tell me, in one breath, we friends, brothers seeking
peace
through trade, in a convoluted maze, our Latin
friends
and you, like mice in corridors, whispering…
Come buy the vines filling the fields where our
bananas
sprang.
Put food on the table again, Amego…
Riot
is not my bag, I have poetry,
words
not bombs, I only lacerate the soul.
What’s
that to deaf and dumb illiterates?
I
was dere doing my own ting in peace till you
intervene.
Check yourself Uncle Sam, I still surviving—
PAYS NATAL
Here I plod through ancient Egypt
Here I perish crucified on the cross...
Yevtushenko.
Today, I survey your bays and inlets,
casting my net over sea blue,
reflecting blond eyes – across your hills –
blue with the spark of
dawn.
Raptured by shades of morning alive
in your hair; freedom airborne on your wings.
Joy and sadness in this tale reflects in eyes;
your people transfigured from hunger
to seasonal plenty.
Your days are music; flute and drum, the breeze
dancing la comette with leaves on dusty
unpaved country roads. Laughter is the voice
of rivers, where women wash the last week’s clothes:
Doves feast on grit, piped from your land.
I come embracing you in a hot month
when the sweet sigh of cannelles perfumes your hills
and unctions
mixed with sweat embalm those smiles
that wear your face: Prayers fly from rosary beads.
I cannot rock the peace cradling my people’s
infant sleep, or nurse the fever of despair
that drives to the bottle’s quenching lease.
Silent, lies and schism subdivide the mind –
the simple folk – rhetoric dazzling
like polished door-knob brass; expose its myth
and truth has lost its part of speech.
Dawn unwraps
its crimson curves on Dauphin’s sky.
Brine-stained rocks recall a Carib burnishing
his adze in the sun’s first light, its gleam lights
a fire through the spines of timid tribes,
the bay
oozes red with fright.
A cluster of gulls, white feathers,
shower like clouds on this dream; squealing
Sunday sermons in a local phrase,
a pen transcribes reality.
WARS
ARE NOT WON BY ANY LIVING THING
Wars
are not won by any living thing,
flailing and blaring fuels the myth.
Nothing
negates the carnage that they bring;
No heron rises on its broken wing.
Wars are not won by any living thing,
dead men chanting from ancient scripts:
Chorus of blight, resound your nervous ring,
glorious deeds
leap from swollen lips.
Hymns whistle with wind on barbwire string,
clipped
like cracks from automatic clips:
Nothing
negates the carnage that they bring;
Wars are not won by any living thing.
Life’s wasted manhood mourns with every spring
severed youth rotting
on windswept cliffs,
urgency and cause,
but a forgotten thing.
Nothing negates the carnage that they bring.
A puppeteer plays with his broken gifts,
men like fools still follow his wayward trips.
Wars are not won by any living thing
Nothing absolves the carnage that they bring.
THE VETERAN
For Clement Welch – BWIR Veteran WWI.
The old man taps the pavement with his cane;
nervous rhythms like kettledrums roll on
the mind. Crisp khaki uniforms ironed
in files, march to their beat, unfazed by fine
threads of rain. The first world war explodes;
its splinters
fill his head.
Barometers record his mercury
sinking in
mud at Mons. Thoughts brittle
like splintered steel bombard a Flanders night
with broken limbs –
these wounds will never heal.
His mind sails with the Good Hope from Castries
through the shells’ recurring whine.
Two fingers, pincered like a crab’s, dip in
the same font where they were first baptised,
cleansing in holy water the blight crabbed
in with comrades in their burrows at Somme,
clawing to
dispel the stench of death
that hangs
like a death knell overhead.
Islands alive inside, revolt at ‘land
of hope and
glory’ themes leaping through
the maze, false courage foaming with heavy
breath, on those
who wait for final orders
lost in this doomed valley where the reaper
draws his sickle like a wand.
Pinned by rheumatic fever to his cross,
death’s signs are signalled by a bugler’s call;
painted battles on the mind vibrate through
walking stick, convinced that death has been unkind.
For every limb that moves, one hundred
young West Indians died.
Mac Donald Dixon is a celebrity Caribbean Writer based in the island of Saint Lucia. His conversation with Re-Markings is appearing in the journal's forthcoming issue.
Mac Donald Dixon with Seamus Heaney
COMMENTS from Dr. Tijan M. Sallah, the celebrity Gambian Poet
"Dear Prof. Ghosh,
These are powerful poems
from Mac Donald Dixon. I like the CARIBBEAN patois poem best; it speaks to
the anguished relationship of the CARIBBEAN and South America vis-a-vis the US.
The others are also
beautiful in their imagery and lyricism. They remind me of the verses of
Derek Walcott. And the photographic icing on the cake is the photo of Dixon with
Heaney. How apt!
Thanks for sharing these gems." - Tijan
*Dr. Tijan M Sallah in the distinguished presence of Chinua Achebe and Nobel Laureates in Literature like Nadine Gordimer, Wole Soyinka, and Naguib Mahfouz
