I lie on my back <br />Look up through the grate <br />Light streams in bars across the planks <br />The black and white reflection of an angry god <br />A pair of shoes walks across <br />Keeping watch with silk-stocking regularity <br />The slow, insistent plodding of minutes lost <br />Happy in his stuff-bellied fortune <br />He breathes clean, salty air. <br /> <br />We here below packed in chains <br />Swallow the thick foul vapors of human waste <br />Rolling in filth with each turbulent toss of the wretched vessel <br />The moans of the dying and the bones of the dead <br />Join in eerie incantation <br />Knocking <br />On the doors of conscience <br />A haunting litany to invoke the spirits of the wind… <br />The seas revolt <br />Hurling epithets of froth and foam <br />To wash the sin away <br />The gull shrieks <br />An agonizing plea <br />For mercy <br />But deaf and blind, haughty lumps of men <br />Shut all sense and stop their hearts <br />Their thirst for gold will not be quenched <br />Till millions die in shame <br />Their pockets lined <br />With generations <br />Of untold wealth. <br /> <br /> <br />(Previously published in Avalon, Oct.1999; Honor and Remembrance, Indelible Mark Publishing,2007)<br /><br />Laurence Overmire<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/slave-ship/
