The African Burial Ground

by Yusef Komunyakaa

They came as Congo, Guinea, & Angola,  
feet tuned to rhythms of a thumb piano.     
They came to work fields of barley & flax,

livestock, stone & slab, brick & mortar,  
to make wooden barrels, some going     
from slave to servant & half-freeman.

They built tongue & groove — wedged  
into their place in New Amsterdam.     
Decades of seasons changed the city

from Dutch to York, & dream-footed  
hard work rattled their bones.     
They danced Ashanti. They lived

& died. Shrouded in cloth, in cedar  
& pine coffins, Trinity Church     
owned them in six & a half acres

of sloping soil. Before speculators  
arrived grass & weeds overtook     
what was most easily forgotten,

& tannery shops drained there.  
Did descendants & newcomers     
shoulder rock & heave loose gravel

into the landfill before building crews  
came, their guitars & harmonicas     
chasing away ghosts at lunch break?

Soon, footsteps of lower Manhattan  
strutted overhead, back & forth     
between old denials & new arrivals,

going from major to minor pieties,  
always on the go. The click of heels     
the tap of a drum awaking the dead.