THE UNEASY SLEEP OF THE EXILE

Poetry
Written By Kwame Dawes

Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,

– Macbeth, Shakespeare

They visit, always, the muddy raveled lands—
the storms freshly abated, the last trees
broken, the upheaval of shattered branches
and roughly strewn leaves, all sap and damp
like freshly made wounds. They haunt
in the morning despite the relentless light
of the sun. They tell me they know
that this earth is older than the history
of my mind, the history of my imaginings,
older than the making of meaning, older
than sorrow. I have learned to speak
of this land as one desperate for the comforts
and the reassurances of belonging.
Yes, this lonesomeness of the immigrant
is hard to shake. I have no people here,
and my people are far away and have 
forgotten me. In my dreams, after
the calamity, they visit my entangled yard
as undead ghosts. They squat and wait 
for word to rebuild, to knit, to restore.

Kwame Dawes

Kwame Dawes is the author of eighteen collections of poetry, most recently Duppy Conqueror (Copper Canyon Press), as well as two novels, numerous anthologies, and plays. He has won Pushcart Prizes, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Emmy, and was the 2013 awardee of the Paul Engel Prize. At the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, he is a Chancellor's Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner. Dawes is the Associate Poetry Editor at Peepal Tree Press, the Series Editor of the University of South Carolina Poetry Series, and the Founding Director of the African Poetry Book Fund. Dawes teaches in the Pacific MFA program and is the Director of the biennial Calabash International Literary Festival.

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