Finis Origine Pendet: African Burying Ground

“a mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye”

When you planted me and mine

out of sight, so out of mind

it might have been a wilderness —

the frontiers of your consciousness

with chattel, paupers, criminals,

where wolves weave midnight hymnals

all winter with the howling waste —

circumscribed, you little guessed

how I would in time become

the center. I resemble Him,

the God you taught my kind to fear,

Whose radius is everywhere.

Very like a Master’s hand,

discriminating soil from sand:

men and what you would have called

mine. I doubt we have evolved.

Doubt we’ve ever left the cave.

What I was in life I have

remained: an inconvenience.

(But what’s the end of patience?)

When you lay your sewer line

up against my knuckled spine

needling my sleep, I rise

with voodoo in my eyeless eyes

troubling your theology.

And you will have to deal with me.

Editor’s Note: This poem is part of At This Point, a commemorative piece commissioned for the city of Portsmouth’s 400th anniversary celebration. The work, which premiered at the Music Hall in November 2023, featured a musical composition by Gregory Brown ’93, poetry by English Instructor L. Todd Hearon and narration by Dean of Students Russell Weatherspoon.