11/1/2018 Middle Passage by Robert Hayden | Poetry Foundation
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www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43076/middle-passage 1/7
Middle Passage
BY R O B E R T H AY D E N
I
Jesús, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy:
Sails flashing to the wind like weapons,
sharks following the moans the fever and the dying;
ho
or the corposant and compass rose.
Middle Passage:
XXXXXXXXXXvoyage through death
XXXXXXXXXXto life upon these shores.
“10 April 1800—
Blacks rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says
their moaning is a prayer for death,
ours and their own. Some try to starve themselves.
Lost three this morning leaped with crazy laughter
to the waiting sharks, sang as they went under.”
Desire, Adventure, Tartar, Ann:
Standing to America,
inging home
black gold, black ivory, black seed.
XXXXXXXXXXDeep in the festering hold thy father lies,
XXXXXXXXXXof his bones New England pews are made,
XXXXXXXXXXthose are altar lights that were his eyes.
Jesus Saviour Pilot Me
Over Life’s Tempestuous Sea
We pray that Thou wilt grant, O Lord,
safe passage to our vessels
inging
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11/1/2018 Middle Passage by Robert Hayden | Poetry Foundation
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heathen souls unto Thy chastening.
Jesus Saviou
“8 bells. I cannot sleep, for I am sick
with fear, but writing eases fear a little
since still my eyes can see these words take shape
upon the page & so I write, as one
would turn to exorcism. 4 days scudding,
but now the sea is calm again. Misfortune
follows in our wake like sharks (our grinning
tutelary gods). Which one of us
has killed an albatross? A plague among
our blacks—Ophthalmia: blindness—& we
have jettisoned the blind to no avail.
It spreads, the te
ifying sickness spreads.
Its claws have scratched sight from the Capt.'s eyes
& there is blindness in the fo’c’sle
& we must sail 3 weeks before we come
to port.”
XXXXXXXXXXWhat port awaits us, Davy Jones’
XXXXXXXXXXor home? I’ve heard of slavers drifting, drifting,
XXXXXXXXXXplaythings of wind and storm and chance, their crews
XXXXXXXXXXgone blind, the jungle hatred
XXXXXXXXXXcrawling up on deck.
Thou Who Walked On Galilee
“Deponent further sayeth The Bella J
left the Guinea Coast
with cargo of five hundred blacks and odd
for the ba
acoons of Florida:
“That there was hardly room ’tween-decks for half
the sweltering cattle stowed spoon-fashion there;
that some went mad of thirst and tore their flesh
and sucked the blood:
“That Crew and Captain lusted with the comeliest
of the savage girls kept naked in the cabins;
that there was one they called The Guinea Rose
11/1/2018 Middle Passage by Robert Hayden | Poetry Foundation
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and they cast lots and fought to lie with her:
“That when the Bo’s’n piped all hands, the flames
spreading from sta
oard already were beyond
control, the negroes howling and their chains
entangled with the flames:
“That the burning blacks could not be reached,
that the Crew abandoned ship,
leaving their shrieking negresses behind,
that the Captain perished drunken with the wenches:
“Further Deponent sayeth not.”
Pilot Oh Pilot Me
II
Aye, lad, and I have seen those factories,
Gambia, Rio Pongo, Calabar;
have watched the artful mongos baiting traps
of war wherein the victor and the vanquished
Were caught as prizes for our ba
acoons.
Have seen the nigger kings whose vanity
and greed turned wild black hides of Fellatah,
Mandingo, Ibo, Kru to gold for us.
And there was one—King Anthracite we named him—
fetish face beneath French parasols
of
ass and orange velvet, impudent mouth
whose cups were carven skulls of enemies:
He’d honor us with drum and feast and conjo
and palm-oil-glistening wenches deft in love,
and for tin crowns that shone with paste,
ed calico and German-silver trinkets
Would have the drums talk war and send
his wa
iors to burn the sleeping villages
and kill the sick and old and lead the young
11/1/2018 Middle Passage by Robert Hayden | Poetry Foundation
https:
www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43076/middle-passage 4/7
in coffles to our factories.
Twenty years a trader, twenty years,
for there was wealth aplenty to be harvested
from those black fields, and I’d be trading still
ut for the fevers melting down my bones.
III
Shuttles in the rocking loom of history,
the dark ships move, the dark ships move,
their
ight ironical names
like jests of kindness on a murderer’s mouth;
plough through thrashing glister toward
fata morgana’s lucent melting shore,
weave toward New World littorals that are
mirage and myth and actual shore.
Voyage through death,
XXXXXXXXXXvoyage whose chartings are unlove.
A charnel stench, effluvium of living death
spreads outward from the hold,
where the living and the dead, the ho
ibly dying,
lie interlocked, lie foul with blood and excrement.
Deep in the festering hold thy father lies,
the corpse of mercy rots with him,
rats eat love’s rotten gelid eyes.
But, oh, the living look at you
with human eyes whose suffering accuses you,
whose hatred reaches through the swill of dark
to strike you like a leper’s claw.
You cannot stare that hatred down
or chain the fear that stalks the watches
and
eathes on you its fetid scorching
eath;
cannot kill the deep immortal human wish,
the timeless will.
11/1/2018 Middle Passage by Robert Hayden | Poetry Foundation
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“But for the storm that flung up ba
iers
XXXXXXXXXXof wind and wave, The Amistad, señores,
XXXXXXXXXXwould have reached the port of Príncipe in two,
XXXXXXXXXXthree days at most; but for the storm we should