Bedspread By Lorna Goodison (Another Poem for Poetry Month)

Today, I am sharing Bedspread, Lorna Goodison's well-known poem about the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. I did notice that a number of my blog readers appeared to be searching for this poem, and I thought I would share it, particularly since this is poetry month. I hope you will enjoy it. For more on Lorna Goodison and her work, please see my previous posts.

Bedspread

Sometimes in the still
unchanging afternoons
when the memories crowded
hot and hopeless against
her brow
she would seek its cool colors
and signal him to lie down
in his cell.
It is three in the afternoon Nelson
let us rest here together
upon this bank draped in freedom
color.
It was woven by women with slender
capable hands
accustomed to binding wounds,
hands that closed the eyes of
dead children,
that fought for the right to
speak in their own tongues
in their own land
in their own schools.
They wove the bedspread
and knotted notes of hope
in each strand
and selvaged the edges with
ancient blessings
older than any white man's coming.
So in the afternoons lying on this
bright bank of blessing
Nelson my husband I meet you in dreams
my beloved much of the world too is
asleep blind to the tyranny and evil
devouring our people.
But, Mandela, you are rock on this sand
harder than any metal
mined in the bowels of this land
you are purer than any
gold tempered by fire
shall we lie here wrapped
in the colors of our free Azania?
They arrested the bedspread.
They and their friends are working
to arrest the dreams in our heads
and the women, accustomed to closing
the eyes of the dead
are weaving cloths still brighter
to drape us in glory in a Free
Azania.

(From Selected Poems, The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. 1992)

Copyright Lorna Goodison. Reprinted with the author's permission.

Lorna Goodison's Two Little Girls

Two Little Girls

Two little girls to sit
in the garden
to play at tea
I had good-hair
they sent me.
My mother made me wear gloves
and I stepped past Miss Bea
sellin oranges at the gate
past Curriman and George
and Mr. Butty
Past Vie who sold her
waitress body
and hovered above the gutter
like a net-over-taffeta cloud
and they took me to where
there were real trees
and Lady Foot said I was pretty
and when I came home wrapped in vanity
My brother said I was a boasie bitch
and that returned me to reality.

Copyright Lorna Goodison. Reprinted with author's permission.

The Mulatta As Penelope

Enjoy another Lorna Goodison poem, The Mulatta As Penelope.

The Mulatta As Penelope

Tonight, I'll pull your limbs through
small soft garments
your head will part my breasts
and you will hear a different heartbeat.
Today, we said the real goodbye, he and I
But this time I will not sit and spin and spin
the door open to let the madness in.
Till the sailor finally weary of the sea
returns with tin souvenirs and a claim to me.
True I returned from the quayside
my eyes full of sand
and his salt-leaving smell
fresh on my hands
but you're my anchor awhile now
and that holds deep.
I'll sit in the sun
and dry my hair
while you sleep.

Copyright Lorna Goodison. Reprinted with author's permission.

Lorna Goodison, Poet of the Month

I have chosen Lorna Goodison as my first poet of the month because she is my all-time favorite Caribbean poet. I have been reading Lorna Goodison's poems for many years and I have been fascinated by her style, her treatment of the struggles of Caribbean women in her poems, and her political consciousness. I also thoroughly enjoyed her latest work, From Harvey River, a memoir published in 2008. One powerful poem that Lorna wrote was the Bedspread, which dealt with the South African police seizure of Nelson and Winnie Mandela's bedspread during the Apartheid era. I remember watching Lorna on television doing a very moving reading of this poem to Nelson Mandela on his visit to Jamaica, shortly after his release from prison. Today, however, I will feature another of my favorite Lorna Goodison poem, which is I Am Becoming My Mother.

I Am Becoming My Mother

Yellow/brown woman
fingers smelling always of onions
My mother raises rare blooms
and waters them with tea
her birth waters sung like rivers
My mother is now me

My mother had a linen dress
the colour of the sky
and stored lace and damask
tablecloths
to pull shame out of her eye.

I am becoming my mother
brown/yellow woman
fingers smelling always of onions.

Source: From Our Yard. Jamaican Poetry Since Independence. No. 2 Jamaica 21 Anthology Series. Pamela Mordecai (ed.). Institute of Jamaica Publications Ltd. 1987.

Copyright Lorna Goodison. Reprinted with author's permission

Below is a link to more information on Lorna's background and works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorna_Goodison