كتب الشاعر الأمريكي الأفريقي الحديث جمال ماي هذه القصيدة، تستكشف هذه القصيدة موضوعات الاضطهاد والحرب بإشارة ضمنية إلى العبودية.
ما هي قصيدة A Brief History of Hostility
In the beginning
.there was the war
The war said let there be war
.and there was war
The war said let there be peace
.and there was war
The people said music and rain
evaporating against fire in the brush
was a kind of music
.and so was the beast
The beast that roared
or bleated when brought down
was silent when skinned
but loud after the skin
was pulled taut over wood
and the people said music
and the thump thump
.thump said drum
Someone said
war drum. The drum said war
.is coming to meet you in the field
The field said war
,tastes like copper
said give us some more, said look
at the wild flowers our war plants
in a grove and grows
.just for us
Outside sheets are pulling
.this way and that
,Fields are smoke
.smoke is air
We wait for fingers to be bent
,knuckle to knuckle
the porch overrun
with rope and shotgun
.but the hounds don’t show
We beat the drum and sing
like there’s nothing outside
but rust-colored clay and fields
of wild flowers growing
.farther than we can walk
Torches may come like fox paws
,to steal away what we plant
but with our bodies bound
,by the skin, my arc to his curve
we are stalks that will bend
…and bend and bend
fire for heat
fire for light
fire for casting figures on a dungeon wall
fire for teaching shadows to writhe
fire for keeping beasts at bay
fire to give them back to the earth
fire for the siege
fire to singe
fire to roast
fire to fuse rubber soles to collapsed crossbeams
fire for Gehenna
fire for Dante
fire for Fallujah
fire for readied aim
fire in the forge that folds steel like a flag
fire to curl worms like cigarette ash
fire to give them back to the earth
fire for ancient reasons: to call down rain
fire to catch it and turn it into steam
fire for churches
fire for a stockpile of books
fire for a bible-black cloak tied to a stake
fire for smoke signals
fire to shape gun muzzle and magazine
fire to leap from the gut of a furnace
fire for Hephaestus
fire for pyres’ sake
fire licking the toes of a quiet brown man
fire for his home
fire for her flag
fire for this sand, to coax it into glass
fire to cure mirrors
fire to cure leeches
Fire to compose a nocturne of cinders
fire for the trash cans illuminating streets
fire for fuel
fire for fields
fire for the field hand’s fourth death
fire to make a cross visible for several yards
fire from the dragon’s mouth
fire for smoking out tangos
fire to stoke like rage and fill the sky with human remains
fire to give them back to the earth
fire to make twine fall from bound wrists
fire to mark them all and bubble black
any flesh it touches as it frees
.They took the light from our eyes. Possessive
,Took the moisture from our throats. My arms
my lips, my sternum, sucked dry, and
.lovers of autumn say, Look, here is beauty
Tallness only made me an obvious target made of
off-kilter limbs. I’d fall either way. I should get a
.to-the-death tattoo or metal ribbon of some sort
,War took our prayers like nothing else can
left us dumber than remote drones. Make
me a loyal soldier and I’ll make you a
.lamenting so thick, metallic, so tank-tread-hard
.Now make tomorrow a gate shaped like a man
,I can’t promise, when it’s time, I won’t hesitate
cannot say I won’t forget to return in fall and
.guess the names of the leaves before they change
The war said bring us your dead
and we died. The people said music
and bending flower, so we sang ballads
.in the aisles of churches and fruit markets
The requiem was everywhere: a comet’s tail
disappearing into the atmosphere,
…the wide mouths of the bereft men that have sung
On currents of air, seeds were carried
as the processional carried us
,through the streets of a forgetting city
.between the cold iron of gates
.The field said soil is rich wherever we fall
Aren’t graveyards and battlefields
?our most efficient gardens
Journeys begin there too if the flowers are taken
into account, and shouldn’t we always
.take the flowers into account? Bring them to us
We’ll come back to you. Peace will come to you
as a rosewood-colored road paver
in your grandmother’s town, as a trench
,scraped into canvas, as a violin bow, a shovel
an easel, a brushstroke that covers
,burial mounds in grass. And love, you say
is a constant blade, a trowel that plants
and uproots, and tomorrow
,will be a tornado, you say. Then war
,a sick wind, will come to part the air
,straighten your suit
and place fresh flowers
.on all our muddy graves
ملخص قصيدة A Brief History of Hostility
كتبها الشاعر الأمريكي الأفريقي الحديث جمال ماي، تستكشف هذه القصيدة موضوعات الاضطهاد والحرب بإشارة ضمنية إلى العبودية، كتب جمال ماي هذه القصيدة لتصوير كيف واجه المجتمع الأسود العداء في الماضي، على الرغم من عدم وجود إشارة مباشرة إلى التحديات التي تواجههم، يمكن للقراء فك شفرة المرجع من استخدام كلمات محددة، موضوع رئيسي آخر لهذا العمل هو الحرب، كيف أثرت هذه الحرب على حياة ليس فقط السود ولكن أيضًا الآخرين، بدمج هذين العنصرين يخلق جمال قطعة مريرة تخلق صورة بائسة للوقت الذي تثقله أهوال الحرب، إنّ فك شفرة معنى هذه القصيدة هو بلا شك رحلة مفيدة لمعرفة كيف عانى البشر من مآسي الماضي.
تصف القصيدة كيف أثرت الحرب على الأشخاص الذين لا حول لهم ولا قوة وعلى العداء تجاه السود، تبدأ القصيدة بتصوير مشهد مزقته الحرب، لقد أثر على البيئة بحيث تغير كل شيء، لا يوجد شيء يمكن للمتحدث أن يجد فيه علامة الحياة، اشتبكت الوحوش البرية والزهور والدخان مع الطبيعة بمرارة، بين هذه الأجواء يشعر الراوي بطريقة ما باليأس، إنه أحد العبيد المقيدين بالسلاسل هناك، يمكن رؤية الألم الذي يمرون به في السطور التي تبدأ بكلمة نار، ينعكس تشاؤمهم في الأسطر القليلة الماضية، الرسالة هي أنه لن يتغير شيء، ما سيبقى ثابتًا هو معاناة البشر، خاصة السود.
