An Incredible Quilt

written 8 30 1976, perhaps in a state of prophecy

WE DEMAND
the emerald city

open the knucklebones of the President
scissor open the wide smiles of the Movies
bundle up the Highways
break open the treasure of Sociology

AN INCREDIBLE QUILT

unwind the gold thread of Astronautics
hack out and expose the ivory heart of Legality

WITHIN WHICH
TO WARM

cut along the red outline of Finance
unfold the tightly wrapped tissues of Subsidy
pluck the blind eye of Classified Information

OUR SHIVERING LIVES

WE DEMAND
AN INCREDIBLE QUILT
WITHIN WHICH
TO WARM
OUR SHIVERING LIVES

we demand the emerald city

(there are more of us
than you think there are)

we demand the decriminalization of Eden

Lessons of Somerset December 1992

(Written at the site of a former plantation in North Carolina)

watching its power
and sensing its antiquity
i learned again that
the sea does not crash and hiss
at its borders
in order to deliver us a message

it is not here to speak to us

fifty miles inland
from the Atlantic coast
the tundra swans hooted and barked,
hidden in the mists on Lake Phelps
in the foggy last days of 1992

from time to time
a flight of them passed --
first louder honking, and then
as they passed with humming wingstrokes,
visible for a moment above me
their long bodies, pale against pale sky

the sea is the sea;
these birds are
birds

the dark water in the canals here
is not stained by history,
but by the decay of leaves

and the thick vines wrapped around the cypresses
only imitate torment

the sycamores, when they grow old,
their bark patched with every color
of human skin,
do not choose to prepare smooth-lipped caverns
at their base,
large enough to hide a child
or even a slave

all these -- swans, cypresses, the lake --
had these ways
before we brought our cruelties
or our comforts
to this place

they are not here to speak to us

but perhaps even that realism is arrogant
still putting us at the center

where did we come from?

we came from another lake,
if not this one
we came from another forest
that was just as loud with birds
we came from fog and the beating of wings
from small leaves with the bite of mustard
we came from
a sudden wind that cleared the night sky
and opened up all the stars to us

the sea does not exist to speak to us
but we do exist to hear it
we are the children of all these powers
we are attuned to them
from long before our recent birth

this is how i came to know
when the swans passed over me
as I had not learned from the icons
of Christmas just past
that whatever angels exist
are creatures of power as well of light,
that they go and come
not by our will
that they can call to account
as well as to bliss

*************

i was only looking for a warmer and quieter place to be
away from Washington work
when i came here

like almost everyone, I'd heard of Somerset
and forgotten where it was

i just wanted a place to sleep on the ground
and find out what my dreams were
and in the daylight to learn what
the presence of a great blue heron at the water's edge
could tell me about his confused human grandchild

the plantation, Somerset, was not made for me
generations did not labor in bondage here
for my edification

again, that's the arrogance of the child
that thinks the lesson are made for him

i was made for this lesson

for just as i come from the sea
just as i was born generations ago
from wild mint and heron's flight
and morning breeze,
i come from Somerset

*******

Dorothy Spruil Redford is the woman
who really comes from Somerset
flesh and bone
and has returned to it

i had heard her story and half-forgotten it
(in other words, it was news)
she set out in search of Roots from her home in Portsmouth, Virginia
and found Somerset in eastern North Carolina
and after a decade of searching
brought together in a homecoming
hundreds of proud people
whose African ancestors dug these canals,
built this path I am walking on,
listened on winter nights to the swans on Lake Phelps,

she still works to make this plantation
a visible sign of how African America began

i honor her
for her listening
for her attention

*******

the ancestors of mine i know about are white
some owned African people
others opposed the practice from the North

but i also come from Somerset

in this land where Carolina and Virginia meet
where dark water is close to the surface
where cypress knobs stand everywhere
like indecipherable idols
where canals were built to drain lakes
water fields, carry timber,
in straight dark lines across the wide flat ground

in this land, the New World was created
or at least one of the New Worlds

it was a world called into being by numbers
minimalist symbols
the calculation of profit or loss
for a few merchants in Edenton or Norfolk,
a few plantation owners,
a few bankers here and across the ocean

from their dry selfish runes, though,
emerged a world that had never been

a world that was in part ripped out of Africa's heart
a world that was stitched together with the gutstring
of native ways
a world that pretended to be only Europe
on another shore
even as it tried out postures and schemes
that never would have worked on that cramped continent

here in the tidewater,
in the rich wetlands,
a New World was created that is still spreading
still finding new forms
for its old dilemnas and delicacies
from South Central L.A. to Mississippi to Detroit

Malcolm said
that everything south of Canada was South.
what he spoke of was born here

******

i sit by the path
where the Collins family rode out in pride
in their carriage
a century and a half ago

today, a scarlet cardinal in a nearby sapling
is the only one here with any proud claim
of territory to make

but then the Collins family, masters here once,
could never have imagined Nubian charioteers
conquerors of Greece and Babylon
when Angles and Saxons hunted with stone tools

any more than they knew
that while the Nicene Council
negotiated the details of the Trinity
people who lived around here
were spending a season of each year on Lake Phelps
gathering its bounty from dugout canoes
made from half a cypress log
honoring its beauty from dugout canoes

so many territories overlap here
the Africans brought here to dig canals
would have understood the place better
knowing many Gods
than the Episcopalian vicar who ministered to them
and only had his One

******

from where i sit,
i can't see the pileated woodpecker,
but i hear him crying, scolding.
his repetition is getting tiresome.

but he has his reasons.

and i have my reasons
for what i have to say
for telling you that you are a child
of Somerset
if you are white and you live
in the United States of America

the swans come around again

i am unwilling to evade
what I heard in their voices

i do not know what made me
but i think this path
this mist
i think the great visitations of the swans
were part of it

i think the robes and chains,
the broken brick, of history
that Mrs. Redford called up
are part of what i was born from

and what you were born from too

these canals were not dug for you
these cypresses do not stand because of a need to witness to you

but do you know
that you were not made for them
and of them?

are you certain
you are not a receptacle
hungering to be filled
with the lessons of your origin?

do you know for certain
that while you sleep
you do not turn uneasily
at the call
of the tundra swans
passing above your home?

wings saturated with moonlight

fixed on the pole star