The Amistad: a slave ship.

Three days off the port of Principe

the Africans freed themselves

and attacked with machetes and harpoons.

Cinque, their leader, spared two sailors

to steer them back to Africa.

But Cinque was unfamiliar with the stars

in our hemisphere. Each morning

he set course east by the sun;

each night the sailors turned the ship

and steered west—until they managed

to land on our coast and deliver

Cinque and his followers to execution.

You don’t believe me?

It was in the newspapers.

You followed your precious captain

everywhere; you were there when

he loaded slave cargo into the hold

or plotted a new course.

What an admirable science, navigation!

It must be terribly complicated,

even for you.

Now I have a story for you.

Once there was a preacher slave

went by the name of Isaac.

When God called him

he was a boy, out hunting rice birds.

Killing rice birds is easy—

just pinch off their heads.

But one day, halfway up the tree

where a nest of babies chirped,

a voice called out: “Don’t do it, Isaac.”

It was an angel, shining

in the crook of a branch.

Massa let him preach.

What harm could it do?

Then a slave uprising in Virginia

had all the white folks

watching their own niggers

for signs of treachery.

No more prayer meetings, Isaac!

But God would not wait,

so Isaac kept on preaching

at night, in the woods.

Of course he was caught.

Three of his congregation

were shot on the spot, three others branded

and their feet pierced.

But what to do about Isaac,

gentle Isaac who had turned traitor?

I’m just passing the time of evening

with . . . conversation.

There it is . . . no, wait!

Gone.

Sometimes I catch

a glimmer, a hot blue flash—

then it disappears.

Show yourself, demon!