Meeting Ground – Christmas poetry special
Published:Sunday | December 22, 2019 | 12:00 AM
In this, the second installment of collaboration between poets of Jamaica and Puerto Rico, we share with you poems from Louise Bennett Coverley, John Figueroa, and Julie Mahfood, and by Ana Portnoy Brimmer, from Puerto Rico.
Here’s to poetry and hoola hoops in Christmas! – Ann-Margaret
The celebration of Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and the Three Kings Day are strong traditions that come with much music, parrandas, food, and family gatherings in Puerto Rico. However, the poems published here suggest some of the ambivalence that contemporary poets have over seasonal family strife, environmental damage, and the ongoing political struggles of a Caribbean island that has yet to celebrate its independence from colonisation.
– Loretta
Hula Christmus
Non-stop motion an commotion
Over Dina yard, me chile!
Har pickney-dem eena dem saal,
Dem start see Chrismus wile!
Dina sen de big gal dung-tung
Wid de seven lickle one,
Tell har fi buy dem Chrismus clothes,
Put ten poun in her han.
Before she tink dem ketch tung
Dem was back eena de place
Wid seven hula-hoop apiece
A wiggle roun dem wais.
Dem wine like wire, spin like gig,
Dem yo-yo up and down,
Dem meck breeze pon de spot, reverse,
An Sputnik roun an roun.
Like eight syncopatin rainbow
Jussa merry up de air -
Dem pretty, dem pretty, dem pretty so tell
We jus stan up an stare.
Till Dina bawl out ‘Pickney, what
Happen to me ten pung?
Whe de shoes an socks an hat an frock
Yuh go fi buy dung-tung?’
De rainbow corkscrew slow dung,
Eight pickney voice hollar:
‘Nutten dung-tung never sweet we
Like de hula-hoop, Mamma.’
Hear Dina: ‘But dem mussa mad!
Is warra dem a seh?
Ten-poun note wut a hula-hoop!
A gwine kill dem tedeh!
Ah gwine show dem what gwine sweet dem!
Pas dah big-stick gimme deh!
Ah gwine lick dem pon dem hula
Till dem hoop in yah tedeh!
She pawn a junk a stick an lash out
Right an lef an cross.
Not a blow connec wid target -
Lawd, de pickney-dem was class!
Dem gadder speed an circle weh
Like peacock in de air.
Dina tired till she stagger back
And ketch har breat an swear.
She gwine bun-up every slip an
Pants an shoes an socks an frock,
Meck dem spen Chrisms season wid
So-so hula pon dem back!
But de pickney still in motion,
Chrismus joy eena dem face,
An de Chrismus hula-hoop-dem
Jessa simmer roun dem wais.
Copyright Louise Bennett 1987
The works and verses of Louise Bennett Coverley are copyrighted, and permission to use has been granted by the executors of the LBCE, messers, Judge Pamela Appelt, and Fabian Coverley pappelt@cogeco.ca fcoverley@gmail.com
Christmas Breeze
Auntie would say “Ah! Christmas breeze”,
as the Norther leapt from the continent
across Caribbean seas,
across our hills
to herald Christmas,
ham boiling in the yard
plum pudding in the cloth
(Let three stones bear the pot;
and feed the hat-fanned fire).
This breeze in August cools a Summer’s day
here in England.
In December in Jamaica
we would have called it cold,
Cold Christmas Breeze,
fringing the hill tops with its tumble
of cloud, bringing in
imported apples, and dances
and rum (for older folk).
For us, some needed clothes, and a pair
of shoes squeezing every toe.
And Midnight Mass:
Adeste Fideles!
Some Faithful came
and why not? — a little drunk,
some overdressed, but ever faithful.
Like Christmas breeze
returning every year, bearing
not August’s end, nor October’s
wind and rain but, Christmas
and ‘starlights’
and a certain sadness, except for Midnight Mass
and the Faithful
(‘The Night when Christ was born’)
I miss celebrations, but I miss most
the people of faith
who greeted warmly every year
the Christmas breeze.
John Figueroa: August 1982
Taken with publisher’s permission, from The Chase (1992: Peepal Tree Press)
*“A cada lechón le llega su navidá combativa”
-----
After El Verano Boricua 2019
The walls of Old San Juan
are decked with the spirit
of the season: Navidá Combativa 2019—
spray-painted in blue, sealed in fire.
These are not Christmas lights
that flutter across storefronts,
balconies overhead. The streets are aflame
again. Our first cleaving still sizzles at the edge
of our mouth—how we watched
his head boulder off a cliff, into the sea.
Our machetes quiver afresh, rods spin
in the ready over the crossfires of this country.
A new pig sits at the head of the hogpen
we’ve come to call the governor’s mansion.
A nation so hungry, a single swine
will not suffice to quell the carnage
we’re owed, the debt carved
from us like meat off a bone.
The entire sty is in for a butchering.
A cada lechón le llega su renuncia,
rang through la Calle de la Resistencia,
the newly-minted streets of Puerto Rico,
in the summer swelter. But the swells swallow
coastlines anew, the breeze stirs Caribbean pines.
Christmas is here. And the people
know all too well that this time of year
el lechón se coge, se mata y se pela;
se pone en la vara y se le da candela.
By Ana Portnoy Brimmer (Puerto Rico)
*: The title translates as “Every Pig Has His Combative Christmas Coming”, the poem alludes to massive street protest in Puerto Rico during the summer of 2019, which forced Governor Ricardo Rossello to resign from office. The last couplet is made up of two verses from the Puerto Rican Christmas song (aguinaldo), “Ese Pobre Lechón,” which translates as “You take the pig, kill it and skin it. You put it on the rod, and set it over the flame” (translated by Ana Portnoy Brimmer).
-----
On the End of a Decade
When your heart is broken,
write a Christmas poem at midnight.
Wash it down with sorrel and cloves.
Decorate the tree
with tinsel and tapers;
make sure it goes up in flames.
When your heart is broken,
string lights from every burnt branch,
but don’t plug them in.
Julie Mahfood, December 2019
Editors: Ann-Margaret Lim has two poetry books – The Festival of Wild Orchid and Kingston Buttercup, published by Peepal Tree Press. Loretta Collins Klobah is a poet, translator, and professor of Caribbean Literature at the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan.