Meditações - the splintered hand of a clock

Cane

When the mule balked, he hit him

sometimes with the flat of a hand

upside the head; more often

the stick he carried did its angry trick.

The mule’s job was to power the press,

iron on iron that wrung the sugar

out of cane, circling under the coarse

beam attached to his shoulders and neck.

That mule of my childhood

was black, remained blackly obedient

as round and round he made himself

the splintered hand of a clock, the groan

and squeak of machinery chewing

the reedy stalks to pulp, each second

delivering another sweet thin drop

into the black pot at the center.

 

He hit him with a rag, old headrag,

but the animal winced only with the thrash

of a cane stalk itself—he squinted

under the rule of that bamboo.

The sun was another caning

on his black-hot flesh. He was slow

as the blackstrap syrup the boiled sugar made,

so true to the circle he dragged

we hardly saw him. We loved the rustling

house of green cane, blind in that field

of tropical grasses whose white plumes

announced the long season’s wait.

We yearned for the six-foot stem, the eventual

six pieces the machete sliced

at the joints, then the woody exterior

peeled back lengthwise with a blade.

It was a black hand we waited for, his job

to lay bare the grainy fiber we chewed.

That juice on our tongues

was his sweetness at work.

Chester was his name, he kept the mule.

Cleopatra Mathis, “Cane” from White Sea, 2005