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Our world is more lovely than anyone's


Duck, duck, Goose. Geilston Bay, July 2010.

What could be more relaxing on a Saturday morning than a stroll down to the bay to feed the ducks, talk to the geese, and warn your children not to fall in the water?

Ka 'Ba, Imamu Amiri Baraka

A closed window looks down
on a dirty courtyard, and black people
call across or scream or walk across
defying physics in the stream of their will

Our world is full of sound
Our world is more lovely than anyone's
tho we suffer, and kill each other
and sometimes fail to walk the air

We are beautiful people
with african imaginations
full of masks and dances and swelling chants

with african eyes, and noses, and arms,
though we sprawl in grey chains in a place
full of winters, when what we want is sun.

We have been captured,
brothers. And we labor
to make our getaway, into
the ancient image, into a new

correspondence with ourselves
and our black family. We read magic
now we need the spells, to rise up
return, destroy, and create. What will be

the sacred words?

Comments

Roddy said…
The lead duck, a dinkum Tassie? It appears to have two heads! Not even trick photography, just good placement.
Kris McCracken said…
Saw him up close today. Just the one head.
Roddy said…
Yeah I know. It was the two beaks that caught my eye.

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