Three Histories

Published February 2005
A5, 24pp, stapled, card cover
ISBN 978-0-9547430-4-8
£4.00

Blue Lion

The Astronaut Adrift

Originals

from Blue Lion

Sometimes she lives in the country
where the blue lion stalks
and sets the dogs to baying,
and sometimes she lives in town
and has finery and hears a piano
from mulatto to quadroon,
octaroon to Creole.
She does a dance from Paris, sings,
she puts her head in the jaws of a lion.

He picks up a hammer.
He picks up a hoe.
He picks up a guitar.
He puts down a dollar
like any other man.
He picks up a shotgun
when the dogs are baying.
He picks on his woman.
She packs up his bags.

She packs fruit, she picks cotton,
she bust the suds
in the white folks’ yard.
She bears witness
never heard by the ear of man.
She grows old, she knows bitterness.
Her daughters grow up to be black women
like her;
they are the blue lion.