’Membering Austin Clarke: A Puritan Special Issue

Do Not Let Them Choose the Fragrance

In the summer of 1978 Albert Johnson, a Jamaican immigrant, was shot dead by the Toronto police in his home on a Sunday morning. Johnson was alleged to have been carrying an axe; the axe was, in fact, a lawn edger. Johnson's murder and the high profile police trial (both officers were acquitted) became a rallying point for the black community in Toronto and across Canada. Albert Johnson's memory pervades Clarke's writing: his characters regularly dream, remember, and share stories of the fate of "poor Mr. Albert Johnson." In this poem, written in 1979, Clarke responds to this outrageous police violence by addressing directly Albert and Lemona Johnson's children. Clarke calls on the subsequent generations, who must bear the burden of witnessing this collective pain, to not surrender the beauty and hopefulness of vision that is their true inheritance. For the children of Mrs. Lemona Johnson Do not let them choose the fragrance for your lives and the beauty In the flowers that you hold to kiss. Their roses are made from plasticine. And do not change the diet of your righteousness; rice and peas are yours: theirs is bloodied steak. Do not let them turn the pages of your book: Bible, poetry or dogma, with their cold hand. Ras Tafari, drums and Allah are your beating heart. Theirs is board; in crisis, and Timetabled hard against you. Do not, do not let them come again into your yard, Incensed with religion, their evil excuse, dictator and belching Sunday missionaries, who Rip the pawned Bible their grandfathers gave to make your father kneel as if he’d say A prayer. Prayers in this policing world are answered with spit, with billy clubs With cold white bullets spewing from indecent thighs. Do not, do not let them Make your father bend his knee to that religion, and surrender his sanity to their white wards. You are the black, sane surviving witnesses to their madness. Do not, do not let Them forget their white Sunday: fix the images, garden tool and revolver in the hand of your Brain, and let that be the text of your immigration. But, do not let them clip the flowers for your Nostrils. Your fragrance cleanse their gas. You must remember. Do not forget that “them killed Your father.” Face the cold word of their murder! and do not let them suck your young fragrance. Marley, Marcus, Manley and McMurtry – givens, among Babylonian petals in your eyes; But do not let them blind your fragrance.  

About the author

Austin Clarke (1934-2016) was a Barbadian-born Canadian novelist, essayist, short story writer, poet, and broadcaster.