12-20-2019, 02:47 AM
First submission, thank you for welcoming me into your community.
In case anyone was wondering what the Cape Coast Castle is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Coast_Castle
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Cape Coast Castle
I saw your final communications, clawed out lines scraped
in black concrete, illegible scratches from burrs on your metal shackles.
You are faultless for the lack of language; you were seeped
in waste, blinded by darkness, suffocated in dank dungeons humid
from the infected breath of a thousand caged men.
Above ground whitewashed castle walls spiraled skyward, its corridors dusted with gold,
your gold. Your conquerors sipped afternoon tea in bright and airy courtyards; their breath replenished
with crisp and salted ocean air. They built a chapel directly above whose priests heard no confessions
and whispered nothing of your windowless prison below.
What strength it took for you to leave your mark; what enormous will
compelled you to scrawl amidst the stench of your environ, to clutch your last grip
on the earth of your kingdom.
After you wrote, I imagine they smirked
watching you limp across the threshold of no return.
They filed you on the ship and forced you on the infamous watery journey.
I can only assume you were not thrown overboard, not spared by sickness
from the ultimate nightmare. You watched familiar gilded shores become small and vanish.
You survived to see the new world that they called promised.
But you watered that strange soil with sweat and reaped no bounty
for yourself, while an ocean away you left behind drought.
Your mother cried with grainy eyes,
Your father died dehydrated.
Your queen bled out and bore an orphan who wanted for simple things.
Centuries too late I flew over an ocean and stood in your empty cell, on a floor lined
with the ancient sediment of decayed bones and flesh.
Belatedly I witnessed, belatedly I mourned.
I heard many times about you, studied you, but never understood why
your great great grandchildren still called you a king
until I came to your usurped castle and read the writing on its walls.
Your kin and I cry over the ruins that remain, weep for what could have been
for you, your family, your country;
for me, my family, my country;
if in the etching of those words your chains had broken, then fell,
forcing the white men to turn around, retreat — leaving you
to don your crown, reclaim your throne.
In case anyone was wondering what the Cape Coast Castle is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Coast_Castle
-----
Cape Coast Castle
I saw your final communications, clawed out lines scraped
in black concrete, illegible scratches from burrs on your metal shackles.
You are faultless for the lack of language; you were seeped
in waste, blinded by darkness, suffocated in dank dungeons humid
from the infected breath of a thousand caged men.
Above ground whitewashed castle walls spiraled skyward, its corridors dusted with gold,
your gold. Your conquerors sipped afternoon tea in bright and airy courtyards; their breath replenished
with crisp and salted ocean air. They built a chapel directly above whose priests heard no confessions
and whispered nothing of your windowless prison below.
What strength it took for you to leave your mark; what enormous will
compelled you to scrawl amidst the stench of your environ, to clutch your last grip
on the earth of your kingdom.
After you wrote, I imagine they smirked
watching you limp across the threshold of no return.
They filed you on the ship and forced you on the infamous watery journey.
I can only assume you were not thrown overboard, not spared by sickness
from the ultimate nightmare. You watched familiar gilded shores become small and vanish.
You survived to see the new world that they called promised.
But you watered that strange soil with sweat and reaped no bounty
for yourself, while an ocean away you left behind drought.
Your mother cried with grainy eyes,
Your father died dehydrated.
Your queen bled out and bore an orphan who wanted for simple things.
Centuries too late I flew over an ocean and stood in your empty cell, on a floor lined
with the ancient sediment of decayed bones and flesh.
Belatedly I witnessed, belatedly I mourned.
I heard many times about you, studied you, but never understood why
your great great grandchildren still called you a king
until I came to your usurped castle and read the writing on its walls.
Your kin and I cry over the ruins that remain, weep for what could have been
for you, your family, your country;
for me, my family, my country;
if in the etching of those words your chains had broken, then fell,
forcing the white men to turn around, retreat — leaving you
to don your crown, reclaim your throne.