A Short Essay on Drowning

By 'Gbenga Adeoba

in which a freed slave revisits the Zong massacre

With eyes that have known

abysses, ruin, and the soft,

untold ways of water,

he would search the sky

and its mileage of lights for a star or two,

distinct in form—muezzins as they were—

to call us to the essence of each night.

He would start in that space of time

with a glide, yielding us to the

many scenes of rust;

each sigh, a resurrection

of unspeakable things.

And he surely does it well,

leading us, in that pitch of memory,

into the deep of each moment.

Now, he is speaking of Zong,

the memories, its handlers as well,

that voyage across the Atlantic,

from Accra to Black River,

Jamaica, circa 1781.

In our mania

and the fluid of his lore,

something, strong as mojo,

speaks to us, catechising our humanity;

a percussion of love.

Perched on the ensuing hush

is something beyond us,

something outpacing the pulse

of this night and its music of cicada.

So we are thinking of lives,

in aggregates, beyond digits:

The 208 slaves

that made it to Black River.

Those 54 women and children

begging to be spared, screaming

into that November dark.

The drowned men, too—

79 in all,

names hidden

in the directories of the sea.

Copyright Credit: ‘Gbenga Adeoba, "A Short Essay on Drowning" from Exodus. Copyright © 2020 by ‘Gbenga Adeoba. Reprinted by permission of University of Nebraska Press.

Source: Exodus (University of Nebraska Press, 2020)