Your Dance is Like a Cure by Kei Miller
31 Days of Poetry: Day 24.
For the month of August I’ll be participating in The Sealey Challenge and attempting to read a book of poetry every day (or at least a poem or two), and every day I’ll be sharing a poem with you. If poetry isn’t your thing, a month isn’t too long a time, I promise. But if it is, I hope this series affords you an opportunity to discover some new favourites or revisit some old ones.
The 24th of August’s offering is ‘Your dance is like a cure’ by Kei Miller, which was first published in his 2007 collection, ‘There is an Anger That Moves’ (Carcanet Press).
Your dance is like a cure
In this country on a Saturday night
you are usually the best dancer;
it was not so back home.
Here you can dance
dances that have fallen out
of season, like mangoes in February
or guineps at Christmas. It does not matter
in this new country;
they do not know Spanish Town Road,
have never danced into the headlights
of early morning buses... though,
neither have you; you were never skilled
enough back there. You never entered
the middle circle - like a Holy of Holies -
where only good dancers dared venture.
But in this country, you move like fire
amongst the cane, you move like sugar
and like ocean; they say - you are the sharp
swing of a cutlass, they say -
you are like ointment in a deep wound.
They say your dance is like a cure.It’s Saturday night so this poem felt quite fitting.
Rather amusingly, it made me think about how Black people with a bit of rhythm (or the presumption of it…) can get away with absolute murder on the dance floor in a country full of people who don’t know one move from another and actually couldn’t care less. In this case, Kei Miller, a Jamaican poet, speaking of the UK.
It also made me think about how we sometimes concern ourselves far too much with the opinions and expectations of others; just imagine what you might do, and all that you might be capable of, if you just cared a little less.
It also made me think of all of the personal qualities and attributes that we bring to the party- even those things we might find fault with- that to someone else is a light in their life, a source of relief and tantamount to a remedy.
...they say - you are the sharp swing of a cutlass, they say - you are like ointment in a deep wound. They say your dance is like a cure.
See you on day twenty-five,
Tasnim