RPO -- George Elliott Clarke : Africadian Petition (1783)

George Elliott Clarke (1960-)

Africadian Petition (1783)

1 The Snows is iron set in.

2The times act not as it Were.

3Snared in snapfrost Nofaskosha:

4We's Dis Gusted by govvermint,

5Discomfotable.

6 We be hauling Hardships long as pines --

7All White whips which you Putting

8to us here Since we be breathing

9And Luvving. Goddam lashings harp

10our Crimsoning hirt.

11 Your Onnour verry well knose

12wheather Ragerlations shell change,

13shift, for our Sattersfaction.

14You forgit us, so we be Nothing --

15Like rain, Sobbing over water.

16 Is there any Nourishmen,

17such as Oat meal Molassis

18or Shuggar,

19a Littl Wine and Speerits

20to Heet our Harts?

21 Is there Sum Sope

22to scour up

23your Cownsil's muddying Lyes?

Notes

1] In 1783 some 3,000 African Americans sailed from New York to Nova Scotia, where the British had promised them freedom, but they arrived in a colony that tolerated slavery in Loyalists immigrating from the States and that discriminated against free black settlers: little or no land grants, meagre wages, and harrassments. See: Nova Scotia Archives . The poem alludes especially to the witholding of provisions, and to anti-black bylaws, practised by the local government.

3] Nofaskosha: Nova Scotia.

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
This poem cannot be published anywhere without the written consent of George Elliott Clarke or the Polestar Book permissions department.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: Blue (Vancouver: Polestar Book Publishers, 2001): 14.
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: 2004
Recent editing: 1:2004/7/22*1:2004/7/27

Other poems by George Elliott Clarke