The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion

Kei Miller

• Publisher: Carcanet Poetry
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781847772671
• eBook ISBN: 9781847774323
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

In his new collection, acclaimed Jamaican poet Kei Miller dramatises what happens when one system of knowledge, one method of understanding place and territory, comes up against another. We watch as the cartographer, used to the scientific methods of assuming control over a place by mapping it ( I never get involved / with the muddy affairs of land'), is gradually compelled to recognise - even to envy - a wholly different understanding of place, as he tries to map his way to the rastaman's eternal city of Zion. As the book unfolds the cartographer learns that, on this island of roads that constrict like throats', every place-name comes freighted with history, and not every place that can be named can be found.

When Considering the Long, Long Journey of 28,000 Rubber Ducks

To them who knew to break free from dark hold of ships

who trusted their unsqueezed bodies instead to the Atlantic;

to them who scorned the limits of bathtubs,

refused to join a chorus of rub-a-dub;

to them who’ve always known their own high tunes,

hitched rides on the manacled backs of blues,

who’ve been sailing now since 1992; to them

that pass in squeakless silence over the Titanic,

float in and out of salty vortexes; to them

who grace the shores of hot and frozen continents,

who instruct us yearly on the movement of currents;

to those bright yellow dots that crest the waves

like spots of praise: hail.

xxii.

for Ronald Cummings

Look close, says the rastaman, on how my people walk them roads

like sankey, how we press along and press along and never yet

get weary. Or else we walk out boasy, as if a selecta man

has called us forth. Them roads was mapped out by song –

mountain road hold soprano, city lane hold tenor,

them big potholes manage what we call a Baptist alto –

sound made by women with names like Elva, B-flatting their ways

through ‘A Little More Oil in My Lamp’ while the pianoman plays

in the key of G. Listen nuh, dem roads don’t sound no harmony

all like you would used to – fi wi road don’t round up

or decent up them mouth. Fi wi road make noise like Rosie

stand up in front of CVM camera. Fi wi road say laaawwd;

fi wi road say woooiii. Fi wi road say reeeyyy! Big chune a play!

xxiii.

The cartographer asks

if not where

then what is Zion?

And the rastaman warms to this

and says:

Zion is a reckoning day

don’t make nobody fool yu

Zion is a turble day

is a ‘draw for the heavy

ledger Book of Deeds

and scroll through and find

out where all what yu think

you did get weh wid

is recorded’ day

is an accounts settling day

is a ‘reach deep

inna yu pocket

and pay de bill

cause more than lights

and water

going to get lock off

today’ day

Zion is a receipts and payment day

And Zion is a parcel

of land returned onto Natty

day; more than Africa,

more than I-thiopia

but even the little corner

in 1963

to build gas station pon it

till Natty see de transgression

and whisper in him heart

more fire

and de spark from that curse

light de gas pump

that was right then filling

de...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Acknowledgements
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Groundation
• The Shrug of Jah
• Establishing the Metre
• Quashie’s Verse
• Unsettled
• What the Mapmaker Ought to Know
• The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion
• A Prayer for the Unflummoxed Beaver
• Place Name: Me-No-Sen-You-No-Come
• A Ghazal for the Tethered Goats
• Roads
• Place Name: Swamp
• For the Croaking Lizards
• Place Name: Wait-A-Bit
• Place Name: Shotover
• Place Name: Corn Puss Gap
• Place Name: Half Way Tree
• Place Name: Edinburgh Castle
• Hymn to the Birds
• Filop Plays the Role of Papa Ghede (2010)
• Distance
• When Considering the Long, Long Journey of 28,000 Rubber Ducks
• The Blood Cloths
• Place Name: Bloody Bay
• For Pat Saunders, West Indian Literature Critic, after her Dream
• In Praise of Maps
• My Mother’s Atlas of Dolls
• Place Name: Flog Man
• Place Name: Try See
• What River Mumma Knows
• Notes
• About the Author
• Also by Kei Miller from Carcanet Press
• Copyright