Old Pictures of the New World

 

 

by Dionne Brand

 

 

 

 

 1.

They show tourists rolling

 

 

on beaches in Barbados

 

 

someone told me that this island

 

 

is flat and inescapable

5

 

just right for american military transports,

 

 

this same someone said,

 

 

the topography of the island

 

 

lacking in gradient or thick forest

 

 

gives historical witness to the absence

10

 

of slave rebellions,

 

 

the slaves having nowhere to run

 

 

adopted an oily demeanour.

 

 

How history slaps us in the face,

 

 

using our own hand too.

 

 

 

15

2. 

They show an old

 

 

black man

 

 

beckoning racists back

 

 

to the way it was in Jamaica

 

 

a full page ad in the Chicago Sun Times

20

 

the slave catcher, the African one,

 

 

is a little analysed character,

 

 

(being amongst us

 

 

is it embarrassing to admit,)

 

 

but in contemporary times

25

 

whenever the IMF raises the price

 

 

on our heads,

 

 

whenever the americans want to buy

 

 

our skins,

 

 

they raise their hands so quickly,

30

 

it shocks us.

 

 

 

 

3.

They show a little grenadian boy

 

 

eating an orange

 

 

with an american soldier

 

 

this is the new picture postcard

35

 

the new commercial for the new right

 

 

the new look for the new colonialism.

 

 

  

 

4.

They show american medical students

 

 

coming back to Grenada

 

 

now it is safe for them to do their practicals

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in imperialism

 

 

and to spit on the population.

 

 

 

 

5.

They show grenadian market vendors

 

 

and taxi drivers

 

 

call Reagan “daddy”

45

 

now we understand the class war

 

 

and patriarchy.

 

 

 

 

6.

They show george shultz

 

 

celebrating the day columbus discovered Grenada

 

 

he shades his eyes with his hands

50

 

at Queen’s Park

 

 

he sees colonies and slaves

 

 

like the celebrity of 1498

 

 

now we know our place.

 

 

 

 

7.

In the end

55

 

I suppose one knows that Eugenia and Adams

 

 

and Seaga are compradors,

 

 

one knows that they are enemies of the people

 

 

and the future,

 

 

one knows these saprophytes

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will eat on colonialism’s corpse until it dries

 

 

one knows that they are our class

 

 

enemies

 

 

but one cannot part with the sense of shame

 

 

at their voraciousness and our current defeat.

 

 

 

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8.

now I am frightened

 

 

to be alone,

 

 

not because of strangers,

 

 

not thieves or psychopaths

 

 

but, the state,

 

 

 

70

9.

they think that I’ll forget it

 

 

but I won’t

 

 

and when they think that I’ve forgotten

 

 

they will find a note in the rubble

 

 

of the statue of liberty.