![]() It was the twelfth October fourteen ninety-two. ![]() ![]() It was the first of August eighteen thirty-eight. It was December second, nineteen fifty-six. The sky was cloudy, a strong breeze maximum temperature eighty-two degrees. In Havana that morning, as every morning, the police toured the gambling houses wearing their dark glasses and collected tribute salute blackjack, salute backgammon, salute the one-armed bandit Vieux Fort and Andros Island, the Isle of Pines the morals squadron fleeced the whores Mary and Mary Magdalene newspapers spoke of Wall Street and the social set who was with who, what medals did the Consulate's Assistant wear. Ninety-five per cent of my people poor ninety-five per cent of my people black ninety-five per cent of my people dead you have heard it all before O Leviticus O Jeremiah O Jean-Paul Sartre and now I see that these modern palaces have grown out of the soil, out of the bad habits of their crippled owners the Chrysler stirs but does not produce cotton the Jupiter purrs but does not produce bread out of the living stone, out of the living bone of coral, these dead towers out of the coney islands of our mind- less architects, this death of sons, of songs, of sunshine out of this dearth of coo ru coos, home- less pigeons, this perturbation that does not signal health. Brathwaite's reading of this poem can be heard on SoundCloud, via the audio player (above right), or by opening this annotation Caliban 1
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