For my ancestral mothers
Something pure and unsaid made me
Turn away from my wailing soul,
Fix my footing in the shifting sand,
And forget like a broken mirror the asps,
Assassins, and their bog-wet progeny
Besetting me, as foretold by the oracle;
Hissing and jostling like eels to take my heart
Into the sewers with them.
And there she was, folded out of time,
The fabled queen of Bahia, glass-beautiful
Spirit of the Middle Passage (Obsidian),
Tingling the mooned-night with her
Swirling velvet skirt of bells; silver conchs
Tuned to a cosmic key, asymmetric like
The mirth of love and providence-jazz.
Only I could see her, this vivacious deity!
She sailed through the heaving throngs,
Unseen and untouched, haloed by
Golden light like the Black Madonna,
Smiling shyly without looking at me, and
I felt all of her in me-mine only to hold;
She was here to heal me, her descendant,
On this brimstoned path of our Diaspora,
Because my pain had transcended me.
Ishmael Annobil, (12 July 2020, 11:16pm, London)