Poem: The Spirit of Bahamian Emancipation - A Salute to August Monday

The Bahamas celebrates Emancipation Day on the first Monday in August (August Monday) which is 07Aug06. I wrote this poem last year in honor of this important day in Bahamian history -

The Spirit of Bahamian Emancipation
is like the battle between the crafty woodcutter
and the aspiring tree.
Slavery’s shackles in the 1830’s, exchanged for servitudes leash
and elusive dreams of prosperity.
The first local vegetation to succumb,
were the Lucayans to Christopher Columbus’s Spanish axe.
Their pristine culture diminished in the twentieth century
to pottery, word definitions and wooden Arawak artifacts.
The Specter of pre-emancipation transformed into religious persecution;
spawned by the English Civil war in the 1600’s
as Puritans fled their colonies.
Settling in Eleuthera, cultivating plantations,
but torn in two by political rivalry.
In the 1700’s the pirates raided local towns
throughout this Bahamian Archipelago
and granted infamy to men like Blackbeard.
The British Crown, the woodcutter of this era,
used the fire of treaties and sanctions
to scourge the islands of these wayward buccaneers.
Cotton plantations and slave trading were cultivated,
as the English Loyalists drifted upon the local shore.
Born was Bahamian Emancipation’s Spirit
by British winds of freedom
to the African slave (the “new trees”), on 1st August 1834.
Apprenticeship hindered the full autonomy of slaves until 1838.
We, their descendants, were finally bestowed the right
to rule our own estate.
Still the woodcutter remained dominant,
evolving into a minority of white elite
presiding over an impoverished black majority;
Until the courage of the PLP claimed power in 1967
and led to consented independence in 1973.
Bahamianisation was fostered
under the PLP’s democratic leadership and vision.
Opening the floodgates for higher education, land ownership
and expression of religion
Tourism’s golden economic glow,
the FNM’s fleeting attractiveness in 1992
and a prominent financial sector
planted different variations of the tree.
Blossoming in the form of cries for equality for women, gays,
international spouses, Haitian migrants and political loyalty.
Still the woodcutters’ foreign axe swings viciously
with technical and economic prowess
as Bahamian cultural identity struggles to grow.
Each passing day the native islanders’ ethnicity and jaded history
flounders with each thrashing blow.
Globalization, data technology and taxation
are the new whips and brands
of today’s local oppressed generation.
Though the war and leash may have changed over the past 67 years,
we as Bahamians still need to heed the Spirit of Emancipation.

By Sean R. E. Munnings
The Raga-Lover

Copyright © 2006 Sean R. Munnings, all rights reserved.