But the kayar’s elasticity ill fits it for a ship’s

shrouds and standing rigging.

The Irrawaddy’s shrouds were all kayar, the lascar told me.

In two weeks, the Irrawaddy had her heavy Indian spars

replaced with Canadian pine,

her kayar shrouds with hemp.

She mustered her pagans hoisted sail for London.

le gaye thanedar

Cargo and Ballast

i. m. Édouard Glissant (1928–2011)

Everything will be used against you.

Beginning with an overloaded square stern ship snatched from the enemy. Look at the name. Who’d believe it was called the Care? The ship goes off course and there’s water water everywhere but no water for the goods in the hold.

No one can tell it better than you:

so many Gehennas two hundred crammed into a space that could

barely take seventy

vomit naked flesh swarming lice the dead slumped and chained

to the living

the dying crouched their shackle wounds festering

the swirling red of the deck the ramp

they climbed the black sun dipping

you fell into the belly of the boat

the boat swallowed you the boat devoured you the boat that was steered by the open skies and stars and fluent currents stopped your mouth cut your tongue

Noah-boat Jonah-boat

this boat womb this boat abyss this boat pregnant with as many dead as living under sentence of death listing on this river with no banks river with no bends river flowing straight towards the sunset line

where no ancestor can follow no god can heal

The captain’s seasick

and dying.

The mate’s a safe pair of hands

but he’s sulking.

Let the drunk passenger handle it. He was

a slave-captain before. Leave it to him.

What shall we do with ’em?

Throw ’em in!

When the time comes.

*

Everything will be used against you.

Beginning with you.

They’ve got you down in numbers on a Bill of Lading:

height, weight, chest.

If you’re healthy, the plantation.

If you’re sick, the cutlass or the sharks.

You’re cargo.

You could so easily

be ballast.

From chained march along the coast to barracoon

from shackle and rope to surgeon from Hell

to Noah-boat Jonah-boat

keel-haul and over-the-side boat

hung-by-the-ankle boat

splayed-on-the-deck boat

let us go boat

*

Everything will be used against you.

Beginning with justice.

You promised us insurance against ‘all other Perils, Losses, and Misfortunes’.

These goods were going bad. They might have ruined the quality of the rest.

The slaves perished just as a Cargo of Goods perished and were jettisoned for the greater good of the ship.

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three;

but the greatest of these is charity.

I am become as sounding brass.

I speak with tongues.