Sometimes in the middle of the story something
move outside the house, like
it could be the wind, but is not the wind
and the story-teller hesitate so slight
you hardly notice it, and the children
hold their breath, and look at one another.
The old people say is Toussaint passing
on his grey horse Bel-Argent, moving
faster than backra-massa timepiece
know to measure, briefing the captains
setting science and strategy to trap the emperor.
But also that sound had something in it
of deep water, salt water, had ocean
the sleep-sigh of a drowned African
turning in his sleep on the ocean-floor
and Toussaint horse was coming from far
his tail trailing the swish of the sea
from secret rendezvous, from councils of war
with those who never completed the journey,
and we below deck heard only the muffled
thud of scuffling feet, could only
guess the quick, fierce tussle, the
stifled gasp, the barrel-chests bursting
bubbles rising and breaking, the blue
closing over. But their souls shuttle
still the forest-paths of ocean
connecting us still the current unbroken
the circuits kept open, the tireless messengers
the ebony princes of your lost Atlantis
a power of black men rising from the sea.
-Edward Baugh
From the collection It Was The Singing
Poet and critic Edward Baugh reads this poem on record in his usual unforgettable performance. The poem appears in Baugh’s second collection of poetry, It Was The Singing, and it is interesting how the reading, the oral quality, the poet’s emphasis on lore, the title of the collection with its particular musical quality, and tradition all come together in a fortified harmony.
The title poem, “It Was The Singing,” gives a resounding dramatic rendition of country people singing at a funeral in a work enriched by tradition. This same is echoed in “Sometimes In The Middle of The Story” since it dramatises a traditional storyteller and his audience interrupted by the passing presence of history, transformed into folklore, into myth. There is that shivering element of the supernatural and a force that drives the human imagination.
Edward Baugh, a jamaican, is famed for the sound quality – the orality, in his poetry. He is a master of the dramatic monologue, whose personae have voice, personality, attitude, point of view and character. Because another of his outstanding features is that he remembers that a poem can entertain. All of this is consistent with his excellent readings of his own work, to which he brings the precise skill of a dramatist.
This poem about drowned Africans in the Middle Passage is dominated by Toussaint L’Ouverture. There are many references to the Haitian Revolution. The scene shifts to the ocean and experiences on the slave ship, and the murder of Africans.
Some weeks ago, we carried a sonnet by Wordsworth “To Toussaint L’Ouverture” in which the poet mourns the fall of a tragic hero. Wordsworth’s tribute has the ring of something lost. Baugh’s revisiting of the man whose heritage is enshrined in the history of the West Indies, in the consciousness of the nations, brings the achievements alive in dramatic fashion, while at the same time there is resistance and virtual protest against the mass murder. At the same time the victims are strong, their achievements great. There is not the defeat lamented by Wordsworth, but the eternal rising, and the continued presence represented by the supernatural interruption of the storyteller.
There have been a number of other literary works telling the history of, or inspired by, the Haitian Revolution and its leader. We have seen the perspectives of Wordsworth and the contrasting preoccupations of Baugh. Other works include those of CLR James who produced a classic, historical account of it, and a play – a stage version of that historic text – both of them titled The Black Jacobins (1936). Like James, Derek Walcott explored the subject in drama. One of his earliest one-act plays was Henri Christophe (1954), which he revisited, while among the latest was Haytian Earth, a full-length play.
James borrowed from the French Revolution, the role of the Jacobins and the declaration “liberte, egalite, fraternite” in his portrayal of the Haitian Revolution. It had to do with a serious rebellion, the unprecedented success of it and the extraordinary perception and cunning of Toussaint. Against that were the imitation of the Jacobins (hence “the Black Jacobins”) and the Eurocentric megalomania and tyranny of Jean-Jacques Dessalines.
It is a similar portrait of Dessalines that Walcott paints in Haytian Earth, one of the foremost plays of its time (late twentieth century). It looked at the revolution from the point of view of peasants like Pompey, the rape of the country by emperors like Dessalines and Christophe, and the presentation of Yette as whore, victim and symbol of the abused nation set free by Toussaint.
Baugh joins Walcott and James in this dramatisation of rebellion and resistance, exploring the voice. This poem is only one of the successful prominent dramatic monologues by Baugh, others include “The Carpenter’s Complaint” and “Nigger Sweat”.
