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Dialect verse: Louise Bennett, ‘Back to Africa’

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Back to Africa, Miss Mattie?
You no know wha you dah seh?
You haf fe come from somewhe fus
Before you go back deh!

Me know say dat you great great great
Granma was African,
But Mattie, doan you great great great
Granpa was Englishman?

Den you great granmader fader
By you fader side was Jew?
An you granpa by you mader side
Was Frenchie parlez-vous?

But de balance a you family,
You whole generation,
Oonoo all barn dung a Bun Grung–
Oonoo all is Jamaican!

Den is weh you gwine, Miss Mattie?
Oh, you view de countenance,
An between you an de Africans
Is great resemblance!

Ascorden to dat, all dem blue-yeye
White American
Who-fa great granpa was Englishman
Mus go back a Englan!

What a debil of a bump-an-bore,
Rig-jig an palam-pam
Ef de whole worl start fe go back
Whe dem great granpa come from!

Ef a hard time you dah run from
Tek you chance! But Mattie, do
Sure a whe you come from so you got
Somewhe fe come back to!

Go a foreign, seek you fortune,
But no tell nobody say
You dah go fe seek you homelan,
For a right deh so you deh!

*****

The trick with dialect verse is to read it aloud, and let it make sense. Then a word like “doan” will clarify itself as “don’t”. Perhaps the most difficult line in this poem is “Oonoo all barn dung a Bun Grung–” which is “You all born down in Burnt Ground”, a rural community in Jamaica.

Louise Bennett (1919 – 2006), more formally Louise Simone Bennett-Coverley OM OJ MBE, more commonly known by her pen name Miss Lou, was a Jamaican poet, folklorist, actress, writer and educator. She wrote and performed her poems in Jamaican Patois. Raised in Jamaica, educated at RADA on a British Council scholarship, she built her career in Jamaica but moved to Canada in her later years.

Rachel Hadas, ‘Summer Nights and Days’

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So far the nights feel lonelier than the days.
In light, the living keep me company,
and memories of voices through the years.

Each summer threads a green familiar maze.
Emerging sun-struck, you can barely spy
the slow kaleidoscope of clouds and hours.

Those flannel nightshirts chilly sleepers wear
as summer wanes: I’m giving them away.
Pass it on: you keep at the same time.

A bough has broken from the Duchess tree.
Rain swelled the apples. Too much lightness weighs
heavy: the heft of the idea of home
tempered with the detachment of a dream,
or tidal pulls, like ocean, like moonrise.

*****

Rachel Hadas writes: “Summer Nights and Days, from perhaps 2009-2011, is one of a number of pieces written in and about Vermont which I recently tightened into short prose texts and collected in my latest book, Pastorals (2025); as it appears here, it’s still in its poem format. This piece may or may not have been written after my late husband’s death in 2011, but is certainly refers to a time when I was essentially living alone. My son and his visiting friends were the recipients of old nightshirts (more recycling).”

Rachel Hadas’s recent books include Love and Dread, Pandemic Almanac, and Ghost Guest. Her translations include Euripides’s Iphigenia plays and a portion of Nonnus’s Tales of Dionysus. Professor Emerita at Rutgers-Newark, where she taught for many years, she now teaches at 92Y in New York City and serves as poetry editor of Classical Outlook. Her honors include a Guggenheim fellowship and an award from the American Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters.

Photo: “Apple Tree” by bgreenlee is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Short poem: RHL, ‘Home Thoughts from the North’

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Dog-skinny, winter’s mangy sun
Slinks between clouds.
A West Indian dog – there are none such here in the UK ….
Nor, there, such mangy suns.

*****

Some people equate a good Christmas with a family walk in the snow, others with family time on a beach. It all depends on what you grow up with, doesn’t it? With my first twelve years being on islands with palm trees, it has remained difficult for me in my decades of climate exile to appreciate more than a month or two of bleaker weather at a time. ‘Home Thoughts from the North’ was originally published in Snakeskin – thanks, George Simmers!

Best wishes for an appropriately weathered Merry Christmas to all… and apologies to Eliza for subjecting her to non-Canadian winters for so many years!

Photo: “Skinny puppy in Udaipur” by Dey is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Short poem: ‘Golden Childhood’

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Golden girl on a sunset beach
With a dog and a horse,
Golden boy spears a silver shark
Under the sea;

Is such a dream forever in reach
Or forever false?
We stumble, emotional, through the warm dark
Back to the sea.

I wrote this in my 20s when I was saying goodbye to the Bahamas – my father had died, my mother had sold the house and moved back to Europe. For the next few decades I lived in Denmark, Canada, the US… but eventually came back to the sea.

The poem was originally published in Candelabrum. I always had difficulty with that seventh line. Originally it had “emotionally”, and I sort of justified it with the line itself being a stumble… but it’s a bad line, too many syllables, too many consonants. Sometimes when I submit a poem to a magazine, the editor points out a flaw, and more rarely, offers a useful alternative. Poems can always be tinkered with.

Photo cropped from “Girl riding a horse at sunset on Bali” by Jimmy McIntyre – Editor HDR One Magazine is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0