Demerara Nigger 
In right accordance, and demandingly
because what withstands, stands
Farinata, the Ghibelline,
“entertained great scorn of hell
and asked about ancestors”. So
be it. “Demerara Nigger. Downward
through the horse” Hells are comparable
but mind stays in advance of dispensation.
This foot, for instance. This shoe.
Step. Floor. Book for instance. Lamp.
From one to the other, and words
tortured out like a turd. Until the sudden
fumble of the premonitory wing
of the bat in the roof. I held
mortality a thing to be endured:
human fact deliverable. What
when fear is hope: if no messenger rode:
way and cause if right if not
an ending. Therefore found it just
often to barter talk for sight
and turn a bat and confuse clocks. At
any cost I had to go; went scorning
and demanding. Mortality put to question.
Cosmic justice reckoned in confirming
A horse of hell as likely as the riding
Companion mind; mind in advance of mind,
the mind requiting and mind singular,
enabled mind, mind minded to suppose
nigger and Ghibelline.
Proem
Not, in the saying of you, are you
said. Baffled and like a root
stopped by a stone you turn back questioning
the tree you feed. But what the leaves hear
is not what the roots ask. Inexhaustibly,
being at one time what has been said
the saying of you remains the living of you
never to be said. But, enduring,
you change with the change that changes
and yet are not of the changing of any of you.
Ever yourself, you are always about
To be yourself in something else ever with me.
Suite of Five Poems
3.
I will walk across the floor through tables, through
voices
Like a man who is very drunk I will think only of the
moment
Abolishing time’s furniture I will make myself my own
A high roof with rafters whereon I will hang like a bat.
Flitting through twilight by trees that are going to sleep
I will disappear into the flame of sunset by the rim of
the sea:
Plunging myself into depths that are always dark
I will see all things and return to tell you all.
Using the speech of men I will whisper to you
Of dreams that change to ghosts and haunt a life;
And prayers in the heart that mutilate
I will repeat, until your eyes are streaming.
Words
These poet words, nuggets out of corruption
or jewels dug from dung or speech from flesh
still bloody red, still half afraid to plunge
in the ceaseless waters foaming over death.
These poet words, nuggets no jeweler sells
across the counter of the world’s confusion
but far and near, internal or external,
burning the agony of earth’s complaint.
These poet words have secrets locked in them
like nuggets laden with the younger sun.
who will unlock must first himself be locked;
who will be locked must first himself unlock.
These poems celebrate significant factors in the work of Martin Carter, who was born in 1927, died on December 13, 1997 and was buried on December 18 at the Seven Ponds Place of Heroes. Carter’s verse often contemplated poetry itself, existentialism, time and being, and resounds with the devices of rhetoric. His poetry closely interrogates an intense examination of self and a relationship with the world and the politics of human existence.
