By: Tecla Mafa ’24
This poem is inspired by the complex historical and present relationship between blackness and the environment. It follows the journey and ancestral experiences from the continent of Africa (my Shona ancestors) onto the mid-Atlantic passage to the plantations relaying, a spiritual carrying of the black soul, as well its conflict with nature which was used against it. The poem ends with a hope for healing of both the black soul and the earth which were and are both oppressed by imperialist capitalism.
Why Earth is my history
The black water licked your skin cold, salting and healing the deep cuts from the chains, rusty seaweed
Blindfolded on a march to splintering vessels, losing gravity, losing your name
Your grandfather told you that the soil on the earth held treasures and golden insects
And that our hearts also carried treasures and golden insects
Your healer cut the purple flesh of your chest with a hot stone to protect you
A hot stone wrapped in herbs and the earth – the earth carried your faith
Housed your ancestors in the trunks of her trees, and sang to you each night in the passing waters
Mvura hupenyu, but that very same water carried you away through dark depths where death was
The ocean’s water is bitter with our brother’s blood, scarlet ribbons lacing the blue
Those who chose to swim with Yemaya1
To be buried in Olokun’s sediments2
Arriving on alien earth that did not beat with your ancestor’s loud booming breaths
Being cut to bleed by strange herbs, strange plants that are foreign to you
Soft cotton, murdered your spine, peeled your palms red
Your blood watered the earth, your blood gave the ground life
bearing strange fruit, the earth stole away your breaths and locked them away deep beneath
where they buried your souls and those of your ancestors to be
When your relationship with the earth is converted into oppressive turmoil and toil in the heat
When they broke your back so you could break the ground to bear them broken fruit
When your God is turned against you by a man in khaki trousers and black polished leather shoes
Forced to cut down the trees you worship, miti hupenyu3
Your estrangement from your faith becomes your desolation, your death
They ask you why you look disturbed in nature?
Why are you not a vocal environmentalist?
Explain to me how the oppressed becomes the oppressor
How will I learn to heal? How will the earth heal?
Little did they know that by wounding me they were wounding the earth.
By killing me, they were killing the earth
A complex relationship- is not a pretty relationship
When you have been at war with something you’ve loved for years
When your love bleeds black crude oil beneath the earth
When they turned you against each other then condemned you for it
Why it’s hard to forget, to not remember
Why it’s hard to connect to the roots that feed your ancestors
I want my rest unbroken in the fields of southern earth;4
A history buried beneath the ice, heavy sedimented rock
Pain unknown, entangled with heavy vines of life green
A history that has travelled with the water, with the soil and the grey winds
Water has memory, the fingerprints of those lost at sea, the scent of the living dead
We shall plant justice, seeds of remembrance, seeds that become heirlooms
To carry a heritage lost and suppressed
And those seeds will bloom flowers
The sweet-smelling, night-blooming cereus flower5
Notes
[1] Goddess of the ocean in Orishi tradition, dwells on the surface waters
[2] Her twin, dwells in the depths of the ocean
[3] Trees are life
[4] Excerpt from Southern song Poem by Margaret Walker
[5] From Southern song poem by Margaret Walker
Sources
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/opinion/sunday/black-bodies-green-spaces.html