Akan Drum by Scott Kristoffer Ripley
Author's note: The Akan Drum is an artefact in the British Museum, London. It was brought from West Africa to the colony of Virginia as part of the slave trade around 1735.
Isn't silent in a museum
plangent throbbings from its Ghanaian heart
thump against the wood
pressing palms beneath the long, black deck.
It is everything of home
and nothing of the rolling ribcage, manacles
footsteps of a dumb god
treading on moon bright between the planks.
A drummer patters dark
a creaking ebb and flow from endless nights
moves with a rhythm and phantasmal sound
rataplans on beaten skin.
East Sussex County Council