So while it seems as if all the world’s a stage these days for the Caribbean’s own Derek Walcott, I decided to refresh my memory of his play, Dream on Monkey Mountain, which I’d read and enjoyed several years ago. The buzz of course is about his poems--his epic, Omeros, and "Forty Acres," which he recently wrote for President Elect, Barack Obama. But let the poet experts handle those. I like Makak.
Makak, a major character in Dream on Monkey Mountain, is a charbonnier or coal-burner, and something akin to the village drunk. At the beginning of the play, he is arrested for supposedly being drunk and disorderly, and gives this rather lucid deposition in response to the charges leveled at him:
MAKAK Sirs, I am sixty years old. I have live all my life Like a wild beast in hiding. Without child, without wife. People forget me like the mist on Monkey Mountain.
Is thirty years now I have look in no mirror,
Not a pool of cold water, when I must drink, I stir my hands first, to break up my image. I will tell you my dream. Sirs, make a white mist In the mind; make that mist hang like a cloth From the dress of a woman, on prickles, on branches, Make it rise from the earth, like the breath of the dead On resurrection morning, and I walking through it On my way to my charcoal pit on the mountain. Make the web of the spider heavy with diamonds And when my hand brush it, let the chain break. I remember, in my mind, the cigale sawing, Sawing, sawing wood before the woodcutter, The drum of the bull-frog, the blackbird flute, And this old man walking, ugly as sin, In a confusion of vapour, Till I feel I was God self, walking through cloud. In the heaven on my mind. Then I hear this song. Not the blackbird flute, Not the bull-frog drum, Not the whistling of parrots As I brush through the branches, shaking the dew, A man swimming through smoke, And the bandage of fog unpeeling my eyes, As I reach to this spot, I see this woman singing And my feet grow roots. I could move no more. A million silver needles prickle my blood, Like a rain of small fishes. The snakes in my hair speak to one another, The smoke mouth open, and I behold this woman, The loveliest thing I see on this earth, Like the moon walking along her own road. (Taken from Derek Walcott's Dream on Monkey Mountain) Now tell me, is this speech by a man who has had an epiphany about self and/or nation, or a man who has been entranced by a woman?
Anyway, enough of my preaching. Chances are most of you reading this are already actively doing something. Last word: I had a good heehee as I wrote some of the lines in this post because of my inclination to associate monkey with a man’s genitalia...and I agonized long over writing lines like I like Makak... (Really? You don't believe me?) Come in closer, Ah got another one fuh you, yuh Doubting Thomas yuh. A long long time ago, I overheard an old man (he was about 60 or so) an he young thing (she was about 30) in a bedroom. True story. He was talking too softly for me to really hear what he was saying, but it sounded like he was trying to get she to...yuhknow. She was giggling a lot at first, but then ah hear a thud (musse was he belt buckle hitting the floor when he tek off he pants), an ah hear she clear as a bell, “Mister, I cyan do dat. Yuh monkey too big!” The euphemism stuck with me ever since. However you answer that, Dream on Monkey Mountain raises many questions about identity, race, and nationhood (among other things), and is definitely worth reading and rereading for all its goods. At a time when some are calling for Caribbean countries to reject race-based politics, and for the removal of uncaring, destructive governments, it might be just the read that inspires, or helps galvanize action. Who knows?
