George Elliot Clarke

1933

Steps shear from beefy, rancid houses, T-bone into sidewalks.

Or: ramshackle stairs screw into air, then accordion into heaps

of brick-broken bottles, trash, jalopy remains. Rubble

architects the North End, some left over dying

from '17's Explosion, when seamstresses got mashed

by heavy machines crashing through floor after floor,

and schoolkids' eyes shot out, gaudy with glass.

A Canaan of syphilis: Halifax.

On Gottingen St. - sty of sailors' uncivic vices- 

Indigo Sampson, pop-eyed drunkard,

violet scar raping his Billy-Eckstine-but-darker face,

remembers wharf rats to be so very bad: Like

white gentry promenading in elongated mansions

while black folk pray in taut shacks. This day's not the one- 

he's toxic, shabby, cross-eyed, and tizicky - 

for two white small boys to accost him, zestfully,

as "n-i-g-g-e-r": He's staggering from killing rats.

His ex-boxer fists- used to hauling junk - elevate an axe.

"Let this blade spit! Let your bloods stink!"

Those two boy disintegrated under his blows,

slicking them with red awfulness. Sampson holds

two blond heads aloft like hauled up weeds.

He flings two fair splintered bodies into the gutter.

His eyes have fallen; nobody looks at him:

Doors have always been flung in his face in his face. 

His crimson terrors could have garnished the Somme.

Guts dangled crazily from fence posts.

A child's heart was hashed up by rats' pitiless teeth. 

They put Sampson in what he called the penatenrinary- 

the petty tryanny. 

Gallant, pallid guards played at shooting him.

One morning he was sitting with the Bible

and his head popped open;

his black scalp puffed up fatally scarlet. 

This is a poem from Execution Poems by George Elliot Clarke. This volume of poetry is about his two late cousins George and Rue who were hung for the murder of a taxi driver. The entire volume of poetry is very dark and rather complex but as well as being about his cousins, provides a lot of historical information on Nova Scotia and on Halifax at the time.

Born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, George Elliot Clarke is an established writer and anthologist who has published a variety of works. George Elliot Clarke coined the term "Africadian", a term for the descendants of black loyalists who immigrated to the maritimes. He currently teaches at the University of Toronto and has taught there since 1999. 

George Elliot Clarke is a huge supporter of the study of black Canadian literature and this is a huge focal point in his writing. he has been awarded many awards and honours for his work in this area. Examples are the Governor Generals Literary Award, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award and his appointment to the Order of Nova Scotia.


Sources: 
- http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0010840
- http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/325698.Execution_Poems
- Execution Poems (2001) , George Elliot Clarke