Mind revolutions in Martin Carter’s poetry

Martin Carter

Demerara Nigger          

In right accordance, and demandingly

because what withstands, stands

Farinata, the Ghibelline,

“entertained great scorn of hell

and asked about ancestors”. So

be it. “Demerara Nigger. Downward

through the horse” Hells are comparable

but mind stays in advance of dispensation.

This foot, for instance. This shoe.

Step. Floor. Book for instance. Lamp.

From one to the other, and words

tortured out like a turd. Until the sudden

fumble of the premonitory wing

of the bat in the roof. I held

mortality a thing to be endured:

human fact deliverable. What

when fear is hope: if no messenger rode:

way and cause if right if not

an ending. Therefore found it just

often to barter talk for sight

and turn a bat and confuse clocks. At

any cost I had to go; went scorning

and demanding. Mortality put to question.

Cosmic justice reckoned in confirming

A horse of hell as likely as the riding

Companion mind; mind in advance of mind,

the mind requiting and mind singular,

enabled mind, mind minded to suppose

nigger and Ghibelline.

 

Proem

Not, in the saying of you, are you

said. Baffled and like a root

stopped by a stone you turn back questioning

the tree you feed. But what the leaves hear

is not what the roots ask. Inexhaustibly,

being at one time what has been said

the saying of you remains the living of you

never to be said. But, enduring,

you change with the change that changes

and yet are not of the changing of any of you.

Ever yourself, you are always about

To be yourself in something else ever with me.

 

Suite of Five Poems

3.

I will walk across the floor through tables, through

     voices

Like a man who is very drunk I will think only of the

      moment

Abolishing time’s furniture I will make myself my own

A high roof with rafters whereon I will hang like a bat.

Flitting through twilight by trees that are going to sleep

I will disappear into the flame of sunset by the rim of

     the sea:

Plunging myself into depths that are always dark

I will see all things and return to tell you all.

Using the speech of men I will whisper to you

Of dreams that change to ghosts and haunt a life;

And prayers in the heart that mutilate

I will repeat, until your eyes are streaming.

 

Words

These poet words, nuggets out of corruption

or jewels dug from dung or speech from flesh

still bloody red, still half afraid to plunge

in the ceaseless waters foaming over death.

These poet words, nuggets no jeweler sells

across the counter of the world’s confusion

but far and near, internal or external,

burning the agony of earth’s complaint.

These poet words have secrets locked in them

like nuggets laden with the younger sun.

who will unlock must first himself be locked;

who will be locked must first himself unlock.

 

These poems celebrate significant factors in the work of Martin Carter, who was born in  1927, died on December 13, 1997 and was buried on December 18 at the Seven Ponds Place of Heroes. Carter’s verse often contemplated poetry itself, existentialism, time and being, and resounds with the devices of rhetoric. His poetry closely interrogates an intense examination of self and a relationship with the world and the politics of human existence.