A Light Song of Light

Kei Miller

• Publisher: Carcanet Poetry
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781847771032
• eBook ISBN: 9781847779236
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Kei Miller's work was acclaimed by the distinguished Jamaican writer Olive Senior as 'Some of the most exciting poetry I've read in years... An extraordinary new voice singing with clarity and grace.' A Light Song of Light sings in the rhythms of ritual and folktale, praise songs and anecdotes, blending lyricism with a cool wit, finding the languages in which poetry can sing in dark times. The book is in two parts: Day Time and Night Time, each exploring the inseparable elements that together make a whole. Behind the daylight world of community lies another, disordered, landscape: stories of ghosts and bandits, a darkness violent and seductive. At the heart of the collection is the Singerman, a member of Jamaica's road gangs in the 1930s, whose job was to sing while the rest of the gang broke stones. He is a presence both mundane and shamanic. Kei Miller's poems celebrate 'our incredible and abundant lives', facing the darkness and making from it a song of the light.

Night Time

The Lost Prophecy of Alexander Bedward

This word this word this word is less

than it once was. this word has begged for peas

one mile to the next, made a slow, slow way

across water and years. this prophecy has lost

its prophets. this this this word belonged

it belonged to Elijah once, it was caught

up once upon a time, lived in a cloud

for a while, spoke cloud, prophesied cloud,

we were once like clouds, listen,

listen closely to the stammered broken

word, imagine what it once was

when it was when it was as whole

as bread. the word, broken and disclouded

limped like youknowwho to this new world and ate

its own small ration of saltfish and yam.

this old, old word that fell from the sky

and broke, this word which by all accounts

should have keeled over like Sammy,

it was found in August Town by a fasting man,

he had been fasting, he had been making space

a large space in his belly to fit this dwindled word

and though the word was dwindled and the space

was large, it was more, it was more than

Father Forsythe’s cart of mangoes,

it was more than the man had ever swallowed.

this word, this word is more than you

have ever pronounced. when the man

from August Town said it, when he said

you are like clouds, you belong to sky, when

he called forth every wing which was hiding then

in the cavern of our songs, when he pulled us up

from out the river, up from off of Babylon ground

and said fly fly fly fly fly fly fly away

truly, there were those who heard, who saw

what they could be in this word, who traded

the ground their feet would no longer walk on

for white cloth. truly it was doves they saw

inside this word. and the doves were who

they would become. listen, listen, this word

did not mean to break mind or wing or spirit,

this word did not mean to bring hunger

or madness, but the word’s brokenness

was its truth, its truth, its stuttering was

its eloquence. this word was always full

of white bones. this word was a eulogy:

it says we are less than we once were,

as much as we will ever be again; it says

this is the dark time; mother, the great stone

shall not move; it says a terrible broom

has swept our rooms, now this is a place for owls.

oriabattacacacasandai. oriabattacacacasandai.

listen to this word.

Abracadabra

Used as a charm to ward off illness, the word was usually written out in the form of a triangle.

Entry from The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories

(a)pronounce the word slowly

(ab)one letter at a time breathe in

(abr)let the spell expand your chest

(abra)let thunder gather behind your teeth

(abrac)you need nothing so silly as wand or hat

(abraca)trust only in the syllables and in your breath

(abracad)believe only in the growing alphabet of the word

(abracada)its pyramidal shape that makes you think of Cholula

(abracadab)what is to come will descend like a waterfall river healing

(abracadabr)splashing onto your mother’s bed wetting her unmovable legs

(abracadabra)this magic stretches Alpha to Alpha Root to Root Amen to Amen

Unsung

There should be a song for the man who does not sing

himself – who has lifted a woman from her bed to a wheelchair

each morning, and from a wheelchair to her bed each night;

a song for the man recognised by all the pharmacists, because

each day he has joined a line, inched forward with a prescription

for his ailing wife; there should be a song for this man

who has not sung ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Epigraph
• Table of Contents
• Day Time
• Night Time
• About the Author
• Also by Kei Miller from Carcanet Press
• Copyright