We will crouch down then in a red earth
hollow, press our lips close to the heart
of this deep Cockpit Country and call out
please don't change or change if you must
just change slow. Old countryman riding
jackass, big woman watering the dry peas,
fat cow, and mawga dog, one-room dwelling
with intricate carved lace fretwork eaves.
Heaped yam hills, garlands of green vines,
cockades of bamboo on crown of the hillside.
Little bit of country village place or woodland
name of Content, Wire Fence, Stetin, Allsides,
far from domain of gunman and town strife.
Country we leave from to go and make life.

'Change If You Must Just Change Slow' by Lorna Goodison

Lorna Goodison's Goldengrove is a rich and varied selection of poems from Travelling Mercies (2001) and Controlling the Silver (2004), together with twenty new, previously unpublished, poems. This is a gathering from a poet at the height of her powers.

Moving seamlessly between standard English and the speech of her guinea woman grandmother, and between story and song, Goodison brings dignity to the everyday and grace to all our experiences.

Derek Walcott refers to Goodison's latest poems as 'a triumph of fusions' and asks, 'What is the rare quality that has gone out of poetry that these marvellous poems restore? Joy.'

New Poems
Balm
I Come From a Land
On Leaving Goldengrove: A letter and seven notes...
Fall Away Iron Filings
Where I Come From
In Dreams of Shipwreck
The Selfishness of Salmon
Naming of Flowers
To the Buddha Go the Roses
Gates of Ivory, Gates of Horn
The Lion and the Gypsy Revisited
Silence Before Speech
Yet Once More I Will Shake
Rock of Ages
The Cruel Room
What Happened to Peter
Giovanni Paulo
Abraham and Isaac After
A Praise Song to Mandiba and the Camphor Trees of Vergelegen
Windrush Sankey

from Travelling Mercies
Spending the Gold of Lovers
Travelling Mercies
What We Carried That Carried Us
The Living Converter Woman of Green Island
Never Expect
Book
Was It Legba She Met Outside the Coronation Market?
Moonlight City
Run Greyhound
Brunette Latini
To the heirs of low bequests to harvest and glean...
For Love of Marpessa Dawn
Miles in Berlin
The Garden of St. Michael in the Sevel-Hilled City of Bamberg
I am weary of all winters mother
Invitations From Heathcliff
Poor Mrs. Lot
Natal Song
Over the Island of Salt
Song of the Scapegoat
Shining One
To Absorb the Green
Medicine Bundle of a Blackfoot Woman
Her body became a containter for stars
Studio I: Brother Everald Brown
Studio II: Seymour L.
Studio III: Petrona Morrison
Studio IV: Barrington Watson
Cézanne After Émile Zola
Prises in Papine Market
Crossover Griot
Petition to the Magdalen
Iron Shirt
My Island Like a Swimming Turtle
Questions for Marcus Mosiah Garvey
Lush
Bam Chi Chi Lala

from Controlling the Silver
Island Aubade
Dear Cousin
Excavating
Ode to the Watchman
Our Ancestral Dwellings
The Wandering Jew and the Arab Merchant on the Island of Allspice
Passing the Grace Vessels of Calabash
So Who Was the Mother of Jamaican Art?
Jah the Baptist
Poison Crab
Fool-Fool Rose is Leaving Labor-in-Vain Savannah
Rainstorm is Weeping: An Arawak Folk Tale Revisited
Aunt Alberta
Aunt Rose
The Burden Bearer
Hosay
Creation Story: Why Our Island is Shaped Like a Turtle
These Three Butterflies and One Bird We Interpret as Signs
Don C and the Goldman Posse
Where the Flora of Our Village Came From
By the Light of a Jamaican Moon
Lessons Learned from the Royal Primer
Hirfa of Egypt
What of Tuktoo the Little Eskimo?
Arctic, Antarctic, Atlantic, Pacific, Indian Ocean
Louis Galdy of the World's Once Wickedest City
Black Like This?
River Mumma
The Wisdom of Cousin Fool-Fool Rose
In the Field of Broken Pots
But I May Be Reborn as Keke
Change If You Must Just Change Slow
The Yard Man: An Election Poem
Controlling the Silver
Making Life
Your Ice Art, Michigan
Broadview
Missing the Goat
The Crying Philosopher and the Laughing Philosopher
Hard Food
Rites
Aunt Ann
The Liberator Speaks
At the Keswick Museum
Bam Chi Chi La La: London, 1969
Apollo Double Bill
Guernica
I Buy My Son a Reed
I Saw Charles Mingus