Singing Fisherman of Ghana

Extracts from Collett Barker's King George Sound Journal

29th April 1830

Mills reported this evening he had been attacked by a shark at the harbours mouth. It was larger than the jolly boat , came up astern with 2 others & on his trying to strike it with the gaff, it had made a rush at the boat, striking it  first with his head & then with the tail. It afterwards came alongside, the fin was higher than the gunnel. They threw fish to it to amuse it until they got into shallow water. 

Extracts from Collett Barker's King George Sound Journal

22 April 1830

...... In a pretty good haul of the seine some mullet were taken. Mokare said that was it not for the present state of affairs, which made it unsafe, he should spear plenty of them by night by making a fire on the beach. Cannot spear them by day.
Told me this evening that Moken had commenced, which he knew by the situation of the black Magellanic cloud near the cross (Whitepepoy). They have some story which i could not clearly make out, of it being an Emu & laying eggs.........

The night being very fine got 3 good stars for the Lat[itude]. The mean of which, two of the cross & Arcturus) made it 35˚ 2' 35"[south].....

the sound of a horse passing

the sound of a horse passing 

an elsewhere sound of night long past  

childhood night too bright and still to sleep 

itching, datura scented, open window awake  

with stiff bedsheets drawn tight over restless legs

a brace of angel's trumpets calling them hither  

hot green breath snorts over distant footfall 

the arabian prince and his queen approach 

bolt upright in bed, peering owl eyed 

curtain fingered lightly open, i wait

they pass unaware, me quieter than a bat click 

the mare leads, maiden tressed, head held low 

he follows, all quivering rump, fat belly and black eyed moon 

mare tail swish, straw broom on leather chair 

a low whiny at swinging hip, footfall breaking 

Atropos calls, ears prick and then they are gone 

thundering summer stubble clod, away, away, away 

towards the white moon skeletons on the salt pan 

the sound of a horse passing  

an elsewhere sound of night long past 

now in brick tin black tar, sheet tossed, inner city night 

hot green breath snorts over metallic footfall 

bolt upright in bed, peering owl eyed i wait

they pass unaware, me quieter than a bat click

the mare leads, all quivering rump, fat belly and black eyed moon

the dogs follow, one three legged, jinkering tree to tree 

mare tail swish, greatcoat on leather saddle 

a voice, head held low by maiden tressed neck, footfall breaking

Zeus calls, ears prick and then they are gone 

sparking the summer bluemetal tar, away, away, away 

towards the white moon skeletons on the river pan

a brace of angel's trumpets calling them yonder

an ode to bob in a manner as messy as i

for the editor

'I Give You This Story'

I give you  this story,
this proper, true story,
People can listen.
I'm telling this while you've got time,
time for you to make something,
you know,
history
book.

I was thinking.
No history written for us.
when white European start here,
only few words written.
Should be more than that.

Should be written way Aborigine was live.
That floodplain.
My father, my mother, my grandfather
all used to hunt there, use ironwood spear.
No clothes then.

When I was growing up
good mob of people all around then.
Now people bit wicked.
My time never do little bit wrong,
otherwise get spear straight away.
Now, little bit cheeky mob.
Old time they would all be dead now.
Old people were hard.
I was frightened when young.
Only few people now,
But it easy for this mob.

Anyway, got to be made that book.
There's still time.
No man can growl at me for telling this story,
because it will be too late.
I'll be dead.

Bill Neidjie  c. 1920 – 23 May 2002

the place that dreamed the emu into being

           

   they say there are no emus there now

 but he is still there 

 if you know where to look  

sketching the outline

"where? which way captain ? "


arm outstretched. holding steady bearing against both pitch and yaw, hand palm down, tips weighted, as if balls of mercury, he sights the far hillside, westerly over the low isthmus and replies over the wind.....


"right over to the far west .....  that's where the smoke the past day was coming from... you see ? the large sand patch... what maybe, one, two hundred acres burnt right through. "


"there was a good deal of rain in it sir, when it swung round last night, good inch, inch and a half. enough to put it well out. But twas nothing in it beforehand to put a strike down though, was there?"


" lit in our honour no doubt, lieutenant. "


" seeing the lie of the land, i would imagine we are well known all the way to that chain of rugged mountains by now, sir "


outstretched arm now drifting south. fingers spidering over the near horizon, a blind man reaching into a bird nest.


"there is a big grove of timber on the south side of the bay. good water as well, given the size of the oaks. hand me up my telescope lad. "


"shall I send the boat round with the barrels come sun up, sir ? " 


"well, as no amount of lime can cover the taste of rat in our water and as we both are finding of late, that a man can not live on rum alone lieutenant, it would seem a prudent idea. bring the carpenter along to eye the timber..... it looks to hold some promise, this sound. "

Mirrabooka

Biami was kept very busy, guarding the tribes as they roamed throughout the earth, and he was very much troubled for them. He found that he could not watch over all of them at once; he knew he must have help to keep them from harm. Among the tribes there was a man called Mirrabooka, who was much loved for his wisdom, and the way in which he looked after the welfare of this people. Biami was well pleased with Mirrabooka, and when he grew old, promised him eternal life. Biami gave Mirrabooka lights for his hands and feet and stretched him across the sky, so that he could watch forever over the tribes he loved. And the tribes could look up to him from the earth and see the stars which were Mirrabooka’s eyes gazing down on them.

When in later times white invaders came from across the sea and stole the tribal lands, they did not know that this group of stars across the sky was Mirrabooka, and they renamed them. They named Mirrabooka the Southern Cross. And the eyes of Mirrabooka they called the Pointers. But it is really Mirrabooka there, stretched across the sky; he will be there forever, for Biami has made it so.

2 tanked

the seed of something

"The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve."   bhudda

take a seed and plant it in a place of your choosing. as to what type of seed it is, the decision is entirely yours. only make it something that will grow. something you can remember with hue, tone and form. with a beginning after end and betwixt former with later. something from a place you belong will do. perhaps it is even the seed of something nameless. unspoken of to others and only ever observed and considered in solitude.... mute.

yes nameless is probably best, as then it is yours and yours only.

the mind is everything what you think you become bhudda

.

a little beauty for the darker days...

along the road i caught the bus

and each night we slept over their bones.....

                            
                

Jan Hendrycks confesses that one day he had been called by Jeronimus into his tent and that he gave him to know that at night time he must help him with the murder of the Predikant's family. At night, Zeevonk has called outside Wiebrecht Clausen, a young girl, whom Jan Hendrycks stabbed with a dagger, and inside, all people - the mother with her six children - had their heads battered in with axes . . .

He said, certainly, I have a knife. So without any objection, Andreas has gone to Myken Soers who was heavily pregnant and threw her underfoot and cut her throat . . . 

and each night we slept over their bones..... all three of us tight together in a creaky iron framed bed.

Extract from Pelsaert's
The Disastrous Voyage of the Ship Batavia,
first published in 1647

a place to rest ones head

He carried Ulysses to the other side of the world and back again, unread.

He starts twice, turning a few pages only before standstill; a mirror, a bowl, a razor, no more. Each eve thereafter he places the book carefully under his head like a japanese sleeping block, to lull in the forest waiting for sleep, embalmed in the elsewhere night. Night belonging in a book, somewhere in a book he once read, in the many nights of books. With hands clasped to chest, tighter than imagined, he hunts frayed words with which to render the darkness familiar.

Something to splice the creaking ship's mast to the poplar's hawsering bowed note once more. Something to tether the screeching thunderbird when it came, talons raking a brimstone sea for whale and sailor alike, as to bind it tightly in the wind spinning off the mountain top. Wind he imagines only from deep under the kelp through halibut eyes, as current line whirlpools, churning the sea far above. Later he hears siberian vagabonds pass bye the bye, whorling iced expletives at painted shutters and doors as they go. Swaying left, right, drunk and belligerent, they stop suddenly. Nearby ? As if puzzled for a moment by a lilting song. A woman's? A woman who trails a sighing finger through the canopy and with a gossiping whisper sends them carousing away down the valley, to the old people Tseax buried with fire... those who wait for news of the sea each night....

quieter, then quieter still...

The ship returns to transcribing the tide. He hears a rat? or bigger? and it's gleeful companion bickering once more over gruel or seed... and when sleep finally comes it comes as a wordless tempest.

  

boats of alert bay

a picture for sontag

(Click for full size)

when it leaves...

Later


much later, he imagines it somewhat like the ebbing of a high tide.


The exact point of it's turn indiscernible under a fecund moon. When the fish suddenly stop biting the fisherman, so intent on the next bite, only realises it is already departing when he next pulls his hook to the surface and finds it not missing bait as he thought, but ignored and untouched. More so, that first clear sign is disbelieved as an aberration and the line is swiftly run out once more and fingered optimistically, patiently 


waiting until


finally it is only the tardy arrival of the grotesque.... 


eyeless pilchards festooned with sea lice, guts distending and the unbecoming writhe of a Port Jackson shark slapping against the gunnel, fantastical and disturbing in the moonlight, which irrefutably signals the now vast emptiness of the sea. Removing the hook from deep in the fish's impossibly white throat, recognition of some shared futile and primordial febrility gnaws deeply at the fisherman's gut... and he sits unblinking, barrenly attempting to reconstruct the point where time and tide stopped and 


waited


before slipping away unseen.

Klondike River

All Yukon belong to my papas. All Klondike belong my people. Country now all mine. Long time all mine. Hills all mine; caribou all mine; moose all mine; rabbits all mine; gold all mine.

White man come and take all my gold. Take millions, take more hundreds fifty millions, and blow ‘em in Seattle. Now Moosehide Injun want Christmas. Game is gone. White man kills all moose and caribou near Dawson, which is owned by Moosehide. Injun everywhere have own hunting grounds. Moosehides hunt up Klondike, up Sixtymile, up Twentymile, but game is all gone. White man kill all.

Chief Isaac quoted in Dawson Daily News, 15 Dec. 1911.