Ash Wednesday by Kevin Young

This poem is a portion of the epic poem "Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels," a retelling in verse of the mutiny by fifty-three Africans, illegally sold in Havana, on board the slave ship Amistad in 1839. The Africans were from the Mendi people of Sierra Leone.



Perhaps you remember the movie version of this story, made in 1997. I mention it because there is a scene where two of the Mendi are discussing the Bible. White abolitionists prepared the Mendi for trial by teaching them English and converting them to Christianity. One of them says he understands what the Bible was saying from the illustrations, and he shows his fellow captive bits and pieces of the life of Jesus. I don't know whether that actually happened, or was merely artistic license, but I remember taking joy in that moment.

I'm telling you about this bit in the movie because the poem is a snapshot of the spiritual journey of Cinque, the leader of the Mendi.

Ash Wednesday

Once I thought everything
has a soul

Then I learnt only
the fool fears the tree—

It is empty—

So too the wind
that sends it which

way & that—

Now I know God
is such a wind

from which we
are rent—

The heavens take
the tree

from the tree—
leaf by leaf—

Being gone, taken,
is what means Heaven—

It is full—of wings—

A music of what
is missing

since nothing
but men have souls

tho, it appears,
not many.




Reading this poem is a supreme act of audacity, because Kevin Young also reads this poem here.