Listener

Lemn Sissay

• Publisher: Canongate Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781847676313
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Listener overflows with love poems, inner-city soap operas, reflections on history, mystery and felicity and much more. Every page sings with Sissay's unique voice - visionary, good-humoured and bursting with life.

THE QUEEN SPEAKS:

I was born as you were born;

Curled into cloth as you were curled into cloth,

Washed with expectations as you were washed in expectations,

Born into a nation as you were born into a nation,

Born with a past as a present as you were born with a past,

Born to a mask as you were born into a mask,

Held as you were held and separated as you were.

I am one as you are one, as we are one, as one is born.

Our family is bound as your family is bound, by event;

Crowned by event. Are you not similar?

Carrying out the treaties and laws that went before? You,

Trudging back and forward carrying children from the well,

Passing on what you never knew you’d have to? Kith. Kin.

Are you not both victim and liberator of your origin,

The reluctant promoter of your blood line?

Carried out the treaties and laws that went before.

Have you not seen peace break out in your family and war?

Have you not cried at the blood shed in your name?

Have you not stood in the name of your blood with blame

On your hands? Have you not known in your family, shame

In the name of something bigger than you? And there,

Didn’t people say how stoic you were?

They didn’t see before you slept

The weeping. The pillow, wet.

My father, my mother like yours, waited.

They said I was what fate did.

For I was born as you were born – naked.

CHERYL HENDERSON:

Ma’am? They say I must call you ma’am, ma’am.

And I should bow. I am afraid to bow.

The identity card is written into my face.

I disappear each day I wake, without trace.

Your silence speaks an ocean. I am a boy in a boat

With no oars to row, speaking to you who rule the waves.

I was born as you were born arms wide wide.

They did not baptise me at birth but tried to drown me.

I was born as you were born; naked to the world.

But when they raised me they did not slap me to breathe,

They slapped me to hurt me – they did – to hurt me.

And then, when it was quiet, they slapped me again.

Shock ran through me, through my inside, like electric fire;

Inside, where my blood is. Shock. Shock …

And my veins went tight like reins up my arms and up my legs,

Tight and from my head through my chest and to my heart.

They reined in my heart – pulled it tight. Tight.

Then my veins burst out of my body. My veins run away

from me,

Screaming from my head, running for life, racing from my arms.

My blood, lines. And I do not cry but my eyes wide burn.

Burn.

And everyone says I have a beautiful smile, but I think my

smile is not.

Beautifully they beat me when I smile. They said that it was

the Lord’s way.

Then took my smile away. So I runs away. I picks up and runs away.

Until the sound of the policeman says, ‘What is your name?’

‘Your name?’ and I say nothing. I say nothing. I am speechless.

Ma’am …

My words have run away, from me. They are hiding somewhere.

And I am turning. I am turning because I am looking for words

And the policeman holds out his hand and I groan and I kick

And I breathe for the first time and all anger is here now

And I scream and scream and scream and they stand back

And they look at my body and they see my bruises

And they say, ‘Oh, my God … Look at that.’

Like I was a punching bag or something.

And they take me to Care and I call people Staff now.

The shock is in me. Waiting.

In your speech I hear your silence like mine.

Your silence speaks an ocean. I am a girl in a boat

With no oars to row, speaking to you who rule the waves.

Indeed, a child in need. The shock is in me. Waiting, ma’am.

THE QUEEN:

I was born as you were born

And my family torn

And like yours my heart ripped

As blood dripped

And dropped through our generations.

NASEEM MALIK:

No, I was born as you were born,

Naked to the world as you were naked to the world,

Clothed in possibility as you were clothed in possibilities,

Washed in expectation as you were washed in expectation.

Draped in my lineage as you were draped in your lineage!

This is my nation as it is your nation as it is our nation.

I had an arranged marriage as you had an arranged marriage.

And I wear a veil as you wear the veil.

I speak in tongues alien to your people as you speak in a

tongue alien to me.

The other day I was serving a man who was taking my service

And he said to me this man, ‘Why don’t you go back home?’,

And I responded as you may have responded;

‘This is my home,’ I said, as you might have said too.

‘Dirty immigrant,’ he said to me as they have said the same

to you.

Ninety days Idi Amin gave us, ninety days to leave in 1972.

Where else would we go but back to the … motherland

… to you?

To your ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Let There Be Peace
• Rain
• The Actor’s Voice
• Patterns
• Moving Target
• Laying The Table
• Perfect
• Gambian Holiday Maker
• Listener
• Ricochet
• Documentary
• Every Day Living
• Email
• Elephant In The Room
• Architecture
• The Letter
• Molasses And Long Shadows
• Moving Mountains
• Manchester Piccadilly
• Remembering The Good Times We Never Had
• Some Things I Like
• The Man In The Hospital
• * * * * This
• The Lost Key
• Magpie
• Before We Get Into This
• Doris
• Flags
• Intimate Anger
• Advice For The Living
• In The Kingdom of The Blind
• Inspiration
• Olympic Invocation
• Salt Mind
• Signs
• The Shadow of The Laburnum
• Chapter The Battle of Adwa,
• The Gilt of Cain
• Applecart Art
• I Will Not Speak ILL of The Dead
• Transistor
• This Train (Sing Along)
• Molten
• Horizons
• Dei Miracole
• Christmas
• Catching Numbers
• Red Sky Dawn
• Winter: Shepherd’s Warning
• Spring: Mayday Mayday
• Summer: Mountain Top
• Autumn: Lost Bronze
• Barley Field
• The Boxer
• Time Bomb
• Torch
• The Queen's Speech
• Summer of Love: A Year In Black And White
• Acknowledgements
• Also by Lemn Sissay
• About the Author
• Copyright