Lament of the Kayayoo

if your walls could find a tongue
in these troubled times
in fact, (if the wall gecko could talk)
how many stories would it tell—
(maybe some Aiyana some Black some Nellie)

will the stories come from virgin fields
long like sermons of what eyes
failed to see behind the Veil or in the dark
and became still before a harsh chorus
like the ancient tales of a solemn trance in Reddish Summer
and in the haggard silence the gendarme danced on
like nature too tongue tied to speak

wish the night could talk tonight
(about turner and the mourners
sun-struck by the plantation sun)
about shattered hopes in the dark night
of images lost deep, deep in the black night
of mothers who died that a child may live
without seeing their cries their eyes

in this cold, cold world of wandering dreams
who will be saved when virtue and crime
weigh the same in a man black in the dark
lite in the sun with beauty and ugliness
walking with truth and lies on open streets
from Soweto to Rio de Janeiro from Cuba to Alabama

I have enough memories from the past
to last me longer than I need
in this cold, cold world of chance

will this malevolent memory speak with a tongue
full of kisses to restore sight and hearing and speech
to the Saharan mole for him to smile and put on
a painted face for truckfuls of men to laugh
and sing, and be content and with an open-heart
hum like we harp to the Songbird's majesty in ease

or like a bitter well
let everything drop pale
from billow to billow with the sorrow
of the pilot’s dread and in tales of hungering teeth
share the storm of tales for shadows to draw back

still with faces pressed against frosted panes of time
if only modest church walls could talk on the day of Pentecost
(oh if the church mouse could call us by name)
maybe the lord will be weeping to a tree
to free souls locked between heron and wren
in every graveyard of the world
where Cain and his grandchildren hang
from a blessed cross condemned by every writ