Poems
Cass plaque poem
Bronze Speaks
When conscience chooses to shut its door
to the hidden side of hope and glory,
I, Bronze, speak for skeletons in footnotes.
Now, take one like that slave trader, Cass,
I guess he’s never heard of Ozymandias
who warned: Look on my works ye mighty
and despair…. Was it time’s reckoning stroke,
or poet Shelley, who consigned imperial stance
to two sand-swaddled trunks of legless stone?
Even now, from the belly of an ocean’s archives,
where empire’s demons are to this day inscribed,
I hear a howling of prayer mingled with curse.
So, let statues posture their speechless selves,
I, Bronze, for the unsung, will toll my healing bell.
By John Agard (2023)
Beckford plaque poem
We di jury
find willie guilty of unscrupulous evil. He stands here moulded
from acres of bones, his bloody fortune reeks of wi ancestors.
Centuries past and wi still cry sugar, willie permanent yasso
wid nuh dominion lef. Wi a walkin catalogues of wi ancestors.
A pageantry of greatness.