I got this via e-mail, but I am unclear if they are related to the same subject or not (formatting is as received, but likely inaccurate):


THE MAKING OF THE DRUM Edward Brathwaite

The Skin
First the goat
must be killed
and the skin
stretched.

Bless you, four – footed animal, who eats rope,
skilled
upon rocks, horned with our sin;
stretch your skin, stretch

It tight on our hope;
we have killed
you to make a thin
voice that will reach

Further than hope;
further than heaven, that will
reach deep down t our gods where the thin
light cannot, where our stretched

Hearts cannot leap. Cut the rope
of its throat, skilled
destroyer of goats; its sin,
spilled on the washed gravel, reaches
and spreads to devour us all. So the goat
must be killed
and its skin
stretched.


The Barrel of the Drum

For this we choose wood
of the tweneduru tree:
hard duru wood
with the hollow blood
that makes a womb.

Here in this silence
we hear the wounds
of the forest;
we hear the sounds
of the rivers;

vowels of reed-
lips,. Pebbles
of consonants,
underground dark
of the continent.

You dumb adom wood
will be bent,
will be solemnly bent, belly
rounded with fire, wounded with tools.

that will shape you.
You will bleed,
cedar dark,
when we cut you;
speak, when we touch you.



The Two Curved Sticks of the Drummer

There is a quick
stick grows in the forest, blossoms twice yearly without leaves;
bare white branches
crack like lightning in the harmattan.

But no harm
comes to those who live nearby. This tree, the elders say, will never die.

From this stripped tree
snap quick sticks for
the festival. Its wood,
heat-hard as stone,
is toneless as a bone.


TIMBUCTU Edward Brathwaite

Whose gold you carry, camel,
In this cold cold world?
Whose pearls of great price?
Whose cinnamon, whose spice?

Your world of walls, o city
Of my birth, rise so certain
So secure; the plains
Of dust surrounding us.

So kept away ,so distant.
Whose gold you carry, camel,
On your hill-top back?
To what far land you now

Transport our wealth?
And what wealth here, what
Riches, when the gold returns
To dust, the walls

We raised return again
To dust; and what sharp winds,
Teeth’d with the desert’s sand,
Rise in the sun’s dry.

Brilliance where our mosques
Mock ignorance , mock pride,
Burn in the crackled blaze of time,
Return again to whispers, dust