The Music of a Body in the Landscape

 

There is a continent where a thousand tongues sing

Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, the whistle and the click.

A place on earth since earth began; encircled by

The Med, The Red, Suez, and Oceans: Indian, Atlantic.

 

There is a land of islands of Alba’s name:

                                            Mesolithic: Rum, Eigg, Ailsa Craig,                                               

a place of pipes and drum where water sprites roam. 

 

I want to plough these naked lands, the peaty loam,

the melon ground where Jumbie meets Kelpie in the music of time. 

 

First, let us bless the blood of mothers wearing chains below deck,

For humankind her baby overboard she tossed, survived the ship wreck.

Her Highland croft cleared; clan bairns below stolen soil - their heritage,

lost. Her sister enslaved by an echo endorsed, embodied, enshrined.

 

And there is no end to it all.

 

My body, a lament woven into a Celtic shawl.

Hers, a harmony of sun and sour-sop; a head-tie of gold.

Mine the bone-made beads. 

Hers to walk the Freedom road.

 

And there is no end to it all.  

 

The stave is empty now; our body-music

a requiem for broken dreams, an elegy

for the landscape like some old wish tossed

into a corner where it sits and scowls at its dreamer. 

Jean Rees-Lyons