Legba
by Christian Campbell (‘01)

A well-loved lit classic
packed in each bag, and a Harvard
sweatshirt, to match the Pakistani
passport: Iqbal goes first, catching
a flight to France. Then me,
in a tie and soft pants, khaki hat
to keep my mane tame. We chat
clipped and colonial, like our tutors,
grinning out Oxford with a nod.
At immigration I put on airs
and styles, let the maleness growl
without teeth. Hold my chest
with untouchable height. All like
a politician, a Sidney Poitier,
an old Bahamian man. I look
only ahead and walk straight-back,
like my grandfather. Speak like he spoke
to foreigners. In his best moods,
he would put on the mouths
of all the Englishmen he’d met,
playing the Queen and how
she gave him his M.B.E.— Pa.
There, reciting and reciting Blake,
until he fell down blank and silent
as any road in Nassau
the morning after junkanoo.

Copyright © Christian A. Campbell. All right reserved. Used by permission of the author

Christian A. Campbell, of The Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago, is a poet, critic, journalist and culture worker. He read English and taught at Balliol College, University of Oxford as the 2002 Commonwealth Caribbean Rhodes Scholar, and is currently completing a PhD in English at Duke University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Small Axe, Wasafiri, the Mays Anthology (annual volume of the best poetry and short fiction from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge), Oxonian Review, Calabash, Obsidian III, nocturnes (re)view, Indiana Review, Atlanta Review and other publications. He has received fellowships from institutions such as the Ford Foundation, the Arvon Foundation (UK) and the Organisation of American States. He recently completed his manuscript of poetry, Running the Dusk, and is recording an album of dub poetry. He is currently Scholar-in-Residence in the Department of Literatures in English and the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of the West Indies (Cave Hill, Barbados).

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