Uncommon Banyan II: The Tender’s Call
An acceptance speech in verse upon appointment as inaugural Commonwealth Poet Laureate Delivered at Commonwealth Foundation, Marlborough House, June 12,…
my tongue mutters a p at p at wa
a poetry of brevity in acoustic effect
it rolls clinks spits without caesural comma
pours from the pit of my affective stomach
ayo do baba
my francofied té lé g ou rhymes an island breeze
a song mixed in bo hoj poo ri chautals
it coils loops twists with a street syntax
flows from the pot of a sanskritised creole
atchia bheti
my grandmother calls from goodlands
a sonic rhapsody of the senses
she scolds reeks shrieks with no full stop
ghosts from the still of my memory bank
ale vini a n ou ale
my lips repeats two sonic negations
e k ou te vi ni vi ni hear hear come come I say
it booms roars looms with its own grammar
marks from the archives of a silenced history
lalang twist
my body dances to metric syllables
deranging the parataxis archive
it stirs links kicks with no syntactic connector
blows from the mind of visc e ra li ty
my voice flutters within four tongues
a transit of worlds in one world
it chinks ticks clicks in bass and high frequencies
songs from the chime of a muted sonata
