The Passage Poem by Jeffrey Obomeghie

The Passage

Death is easy
It is living that is hard

Captain Luke Collingwood:

The journey took us several months
Like Xenophon's battles fought on several fronts
Men and women sweating below deck
Chained by the ankle, chained by the neck,
We could hear them breathe, we could hear them die
We could smell their stink, their final sigh

I have read all the portrayals
About what we paid for the betrayals
True, some of them sold us their men and their women
But some refused to sell, still we took their children

Down below the deck, I hear them praying
to their gods as we pray to the Holy Virgin
When we get to land, we will teach them salvation
Save their heathen souls from damnation

Some said we didn't give them enough room to lie
I say they had plenty of room to die

We treated them no worse than our livestock, but no better
With the children, perhaps we could have been gentler
And when they arrived in the New World we gave them a chance at repentance
Saved them from their pagan gods and their lust for vengeance
So do not tell me about guilt
Or the inhumanity of the business that we built
We had investors to worry about and mouths to feed
So if they had to bleed, by God let them bleed

The seas were so unkind
And we couldn't wait to see land
The sharks that escorted us on the journey were well-fed
Every night we tossed them a hand or a head
Often we had to use the whips
That we carried on those ships
It was the best way to keep the discipline
And it was better than any medicine
It is impossible to put down a mutiny
Simply by shouting from a balcony
Ask Niccolò

They died with their eyes open
They died with their hands clenched
They died with their teeth gritted
The mothers died sobbing for their children and the children died sobbing for their mothers

You should have seen the evenings,
Sunsets prettier than the city of Persepolis
Nightly, we brought them on the deck for a parade
With a heavy hand we had to persuade
We dragged them from the hold screaming
To get their exercise through dancing
They danced and sang sweet songs
About lands they would never see again
We drank our rum as they beat their gongs
And we thought of how our journey began

The Survivor:

The mothers wept for their children
The men wept for their manhood
Shackled to each other, we smelled each other's filth
We saw each other's death and we did not like what we saw
Yet we envied those whose souls had fled
The heat was unbearable
Broken, wracked with pain, but nobody was crying
Hungry, sick, and weak, but nobody was crying
We were all too busy dying
We died with our eyes open
We died with our hands clenched
We died with our teeth gritted
We died cursing our fathers and we died cursing our brothers

The rape of a wife or a daughter is quite easy to accept
once you have mastered the art of denial
Once you have convinced yourself that you and they are already dead
For who can hurt the dead?
Not even a man with sea eyes
So we sat quietly while they took turns with our wives and daughters
But not Mansou
Mansou howled all night when they took Fatima
In the morning they found him dead
The chain that bound his arms he had wrapped around his own neck
They cast him into the waters
Into the jaws of grateful sharks
And Mansou's soul soared higher and higher
to a land where there are no beginnings and no endings
Far from Captain Collingwood, the good Christian Doctor

The Survivor:

They branded the men and even the women
And at night the captain drank his rum
While the wood floor shook like a drum

Captain Collingwood:

You should have seen the boats, they were marvelous
Enchanting names like Henrietta Marie, Hubridas, and La Concorde
named after women with pretty eyes who were well-bred
Or the square of the guillotine which had claimed many a head
When we landed, we moved them from the bilboes to the barracoons

The Survivor:

Death is easy
It is living that is hard
Dysentery and scurvy will kill us
If grief and heartbreak do not kill us
Measles and smallpox will kill us
If pain and despair do not kill us
Listen, listen
Do you hear Zuma screaming?
Her water has broken but there is no midwife
Today is as good a day to die as any
The baby who dared to be born must return to the land of the unborn

I have taught myself to unlearn the language of hope
hope only sends a man down a pebbled slope
Sure the sun always rises but it rises not for us
And every day is accursed so why raise your hopes?

What is the life of a human being worth, you ask
I will tell you
Sixty pounds
or perhaps eighty pounds
if you can find an eager buyer
Who is willing to go higher

Captain Collingwood:

When our crew ran out of water and food,
frustration grew and tension brewed
Decisions had to be made
Who to toss overboard or put to the blade
Some chose to jump into the sea
So we simply let them be
On November 29, we lost 142 slaves
We tossed men women and children to their watery graves
But the insurance company wouldn't pay for the lost cargo
After we sailed past the island of Tobago
And reached Jamaica's Black River
Death choking the ship with its fever
And all we asked for was 30 pounds a head.
What we sold them for was 36 pounds a head
They wouldn't pay even for the bullets we had to waste
On the slaves who jumped overboard in haste
We shot them not out of mercy
But to punish them for felony
Their lives were not theirs to take
We paid for them, for Christ's sake
A sad day it was on the Zong
As the wind bore our boat along
We wept all night
But not for the dead or the dying
We wept at our plight
We wept for what we were losing
Sixty pounds we could have made for each man
But the sea, the greedy sea ruined our plan