Sukanah
I
I’ve come in away from
the singing of shoe-shine men,
pounding mortars in backyards,
cricket screams, glaring moon- eyes.
Silence in my house speaks of peace.
My woman who I keep , sleeps,
head hanging over a cot’s rim.
She grunts, breath dressed in rum,
in a restless dream.
I’ve come in away from smothering scenes,
shed my coat, dropped my pant.
I rip my shirt, peel off underwear,
shed my skin. It lies empty of me.
My spirit breathes free of man’s life once more.
II
Climbing out the window,
shadowless in moonlight,
I touch ground, run elastic
in my freedom which ends at sunlight.
III
I catch fish under reefs
and cannot eat,
have no pockets or body to hold it.
I dream hours.
IV
I must return to skin-prison
in a dim house.
V
My woman sits on the edge of her cot
and laughs like a demon.
She speaks of evil.
I see evil, hear evil.
VI
My woman has salted my skin
knowing I cannot go back into it
dried, brittle, dead breaking into nothing.
She knows I will die as man, as spirit without body.
I must have body and spirit or wander in the night,
fly away from the voices of men at day.
VII
My woman believes me evil
for I am man who sheds his skin
after day’s death.
©) Althea Romeo-Mark, PALAVER, Downtown Poet Co-op, New York, 1978
ISBN:0-917404-10-3
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