Cape Coast Castle

[Knot]

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Hi Visibility,
lots to like here.

I particularly enjoyed
You are faultless for the lack of language;
and
Your queen bled out and bore an orphan who wanted for simple things.

Centuries too late I flew over an ocean


But, perhaps, there's too much.
(Lines like S1, L10-12 don't help the piece, I think).

S1, for instance, might condense to


I saw your final lines,
gouges in black concrete
illegible scratches
from the burs on your shackles.
You are faultless
for the lack of language,
seeped in waste
suffocated in the infected breath
of a thousand caged men
below the whitewashed walls
of Cape Coast castle, corridors
dusted with gold. In the chapel
above you priests hear no confessions
and see no sin in what they do.


anyway, just food for thought


_____


I'm confused by 'communications' (L1) - it seems both distancing and too formal.
(And do the walls 'spiral'? I didn't get that from the picture).

I think you might want to revisit the title. The poem seems less about the castle, than
about some unnamed ancestral king.


Best, Knot.



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