Middle Passage by Robert Hayden

Middle Passage 

 

I

 

Jesús, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy:

 

       Sails flashing to the wind like weapons,

       sharks following the moans the fever and the dying;   

       horror the corposant and compass rose.

 

Middle Passage:

               voyage through death

                               to life upon these shores.

 

       “10 April 1800—

       Blacks rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says   

       their moaning is a prayer for death,

       ours and their own. Some try to starve themselves.   

       Lost three this morning leaped with crazy laughter   

       to the waiting sharks, sang as they went under.”

 

Desire, Adventure, Tartar, Ann:

 

       Standing to America, bringing home   

       black gold, black ivory, black seed.

 

               Deep in the festering hold thy father lies,   

               of his bones New England pews are made,   

               those are altar lights that were his eyes.

 

Jesus    Saviour    Pilot    Me

Over    Life’s    Tempestuous    Sea

 

We pray that Thou wilt grant, O Lord,   

safe passage to our vessels bringing   

heathen souls unto Thy chastening.

 

Jesus    Saviour

 

       “8 bells. I cannot sleep, for I am sick

       with fear, but writing eases fear a little

       since still my eyes can see these words take shape   

       upon the page & so I write, as one

       would turn to exorcism. 4 days scudding,

       but now the sea is calm again. Misfortune

       follows in our wake like sharks (our grinning   

       tutelary gods). Which one of us

       has killed an albatross? A plague among

       our blacks—Ophthalmia: blindness—& we   

       have jettisoned the blind to no avail.

       It spreads, the terrifying sickness spreads.

       Its claws have scratched sight from the Capt.'s eyes   

       & there is blindness in the fo’c’sle

       & we must sail 3 weeks before we come

       to port.”

 

               What port awaits us, Davy Jones’

               or home? I’ve heard of slavers drifting, drifting,   

               playthings of wind and storm and chance, their crews   

               gone blind, the jungle hatred

               crawling up on deck.

 

Thou    Who    Walked    On    Galilee

 

       “Deponent further sayeth The Bella J

       left the Guinea Coast

       with cargo of five hundred blacks and odd   

       for the barracoons of Florida:

 

       “That there was hardly room ’tween-decks for half   

       the sweltering cattle stowed spoon-fashion there;   

       that some went mad of thirst and tore their flesh   

       and sucked the blood:

 

       “That Crew and Captain lusted with the comeliest   

       of the savage girls kept naked in the cabins;   

       that there was one they called The Guinea Rose   

       and they cast lots and fought to lie with her:

 

       “That when the Bo’s’n piped all hands, the flames   

       spreading from starboard already were beyond   

       control, the negroes howling and their chains   

       entangled with the flames:

 

       “That the burning blacks could not be reached,   

       that the Crew abandoned ship,

       leaving their shrieking negresses behind,

       that the Captain perished drunken with the wenches:

 

       “Further Deponent sayeth not.”

 

Pilot    Oh    Pilot    Me

 

 

       II

 

Aye, lad, and I have seen those factories,   

Gambia, Rio Pongo, Calabar;

have watched the artful mongos baiting traps   

of war wherein the victor and the vanquished

 

Were caught as prizes for our barracoons.   

Have seen the nigger kings whose vanity

and greed turned wild black hides of Fellatah,   

Mandingo, Ibo, Kru to gold for us.

 

And there was one—King Anthracite we named him—

fetish face beneath French parasols

of brass and orange velvet, impudent mouth

whose cups were carven skulls of enemies:

 

He’d honor us with drum and feast and conjo   

and palm-oil-glistening wenches deft in love,   

and for tin crowns that shone with paste,   

red calico and German-silver trinkets

 

Would have the drums talk war and send   

his warriors to burn the sleeping villages   

and kill the sick and old and lead the young   

in coffles to our factories.

 

Twenty years a trader, twenty years,

for there was wealth aplenty to be harvested   

from those black fields, and I’d be trading still   

but for the fevers melting down my bones.

 

 

       III

 

Shuttles in the rocking loom of history,   

the dark ships move, the dark ships move,   

their bright ironical names

like jests of kindness on a murderer’s mouth;   

plough through thrashing glister toward   

fata morgana’s lucent melting shore,   

weave toward New World littorals that are   

mirage and myth and actual shore.

 

Voyage through death,

                               voyage whose chartings are unlove.

 

A charnel stench, effluvium of living death   

spreads outward from the hold,

where the living and the dead, the horribly dying,   

lie interlocked, lie foul with blood and excrement.

 

       Deep in the festering hold thy father lies,   

       the corpse of mercy rots with him,   

       rats eat love’s rotten gelid eyes.

 

       But, oh, the living look at you

       with human eyes whose suffering accuses you,   

       whose hatred reaches through the swill of dark   

       to strike you like a leper’s claw.

 

       You cannot stare that hatred down

       or chain the fear that stalks the watches

       and breathes on you its fetid scorching breath;   

       cannot kill the deep immortal human wish,   

       the timeless will.

 

               “But for the storm that flung up barriers   

               of wind and wave, The Amistad, señores,

               would have reached the port of Príncipe in two,   

               three days at most; but for the storm we should   

               have been prepared for what befell.   

               Swift as the puma’s leap it came. There was   

               that interval of moonless calm filled only   

               with the water’s and the rigging’s usual sounds,   

               then sudden movement, blows and snarling cries   

               and they had fallen on us with machete   

               and marlinspike. It was as though the very   

               air, the night itself were striking us.   

               Exhausted by the rigors of the storm,

               we were no match for them. Our men went down   

               before the murderous Africans. Our loyal   

               Celestino ran from below with gun   

               and lantern and I saw, before the cane-

               knife’s wounding flash, Cinquez,

               that surly brute who calls himself a prince,   

               directing, urging on the ghastly work.

               He hacked the poor mulatto down, and then   

               he turned on me. The decks were slippery

               when daylight finally came. It sickens me   

               to think of what I saw, of how these apes   

               threw overboard the butchered bodies of

               our men, true Christians all, like so much jetsam.   

               Enough, enough. The rest is quickly told:   

               Cinquez was forced to spare the two of us   

               you see to steer the ship to Africa,   

               and we like phantoms doomed to rove the sea   

               voyaged east by day and west by night,   

               deceiving them, hoping for rescue,   

               prisoners on our own vessel, till   

               at length we drifted to the shores of this   

               your land, America, where we were freed   

               from our unspeakable misery. Now we   

               demand, good sirs, the extradition of   

               Cinquez and his accomplices to La   

               Havana. And it distresses us to know   

               there are so many here who seem inclined   

               to justify the mutiny of these blacks.   

               We find it paradoxical indeed

               that you whose wealth, whose tree of liberty   

               are rooted in the labor of your slaves

               should suffer the august John Quincy Adams   

               to speak with so much passion of the right   

               of chattel slaves to kill their lawful masters   

               and with his Roman rhetoric weave a hero’s   

               garland for Cinquez. I tell you that   

               we are determined to return to Cuba

               with our slaves and there see justice done. Cinquez—

               or let us say ‘the Prince’—Cinquez shall die.”

 

       The deep immortal human wish,   

       the timeless will:

 

               Cinquez its deathless primaveral image,   

               life that transfigures many lives.

 

       Voyage through death

                                     to life upon these shores.