book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is available
ISBN Trade paperback 978-1-64286-003-0
ISBN E-book 978-1-64286-023-8
First published as De laatste dichters in the Netherlands in 2004 by Atlas Contact, Amsterdam.
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained herein.
This book was published with the support of the Dutch Foundation for Literature
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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for my son Daniël
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The Last Poets are
Jerome Huling / Omar Ben Hassen / Umar Bin Hassan
Felipe Luciano
Gylan Kain
David Nelson
Charles Davis / Abiodun Oyewole
Alafia Pudim / Jalal Nuriddin
Raymond Hurrey / Nilija Obabi
Suliaman El-Hadi
Don Babatunde Eaton
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This was always, and remains
a foreign land. And we are
undoubtedly, the slaves.
There is some music, that shd come on now
With space for human drama, there shd be some memory
that leaves you smiling. That is, night and the way
Her lovely hand, extended. The Star, the star, all night
We loved it
Like ourselves.
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THE TIME HAS COME
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AUTUMN
Prologue
He remembered the exact day: November 11, 1979. It was a Thursday afternoon. He was in Ameja’s place, a swanky apartment on the eighth floor on Columbus Avenue. He looked outside. It was raining gently. He stood in the living room, watching the drops trickle slowly down the window, zigzagging their way over the glass. Outside, the streetlights were already on. He saw the trees in Central Park, the vibrant spectrum of yellow and green and red and rust-brown. The wispy, watery clouds up above and the pale orange-yellow sunlight trying to break through. Even now, twenty years later, he remembered every detail of that depressing view. As if everything stood still. The glossy reflection of his face in the windowpane. The lights of the cars and taxis down below, melting into one long glistening image, a fading flash of light that nestled into his memory. He had never seen New York like this before, the city as an abstract painting, frozen in his gaze. The city as a perfect reflection of his state of mind. He felt calm. His head was clear. He heard the soft hum of the furnace. It was as though he had spent his whole life working toward this moment. Everything he had been through up till now, all the violence, the commotion, the love affairs, the sex, the disappointment, the successes, drained from him and left him empty. That is how he felt: as though he was ready to fall, fall as deep as he could.
Ameja was out. She said she’d be late, that she had to go to Harlem for business and that he should wait for her. The burned, bitter smell of crack cocaine wafted into the living room. Zaid, a prominent Nation of Islam preacher, was in the kitchen. You could always find him at Ameja’s. ‘Come on, brother Umar, you gotta try this, it’s the next level,’ he had said, with that whispering, conspiratorial voice of his. ‘It’s better than sniffing, it’s heaven on earth.’ Of course, he never said this when Ameja was around. Ameja had forbidden him to smoke the stuff. She would give him as much white powder as he wanted, as long as he didn’t smoke it. ‘That’ll be the end,’ she said. ‘I’ll throw you out.’
He was clean that afternoon. He had shaved and showered and put on one of the white silk dress shirts that Ameja had bought him from her cousin on 125th St. Ameja bought everything for him. Brooks Brothers suits, a fedora, shoes, cocaine. And he gave her sex.
He recalled their first encounter, one night a few months back. It was the premiere of Suspenders. His first play to be staged. It was about a black and a white man stuck in an elevator in an office building on Wall Street. Larry Fishburne played the lead. There was an after-party and Larry had introduced him to Ameja. Ameja was tall and slender and her hair hung past her shoulders. He wondered how she got it to stay so smooth and glossy. Her skin was unblemished and chocolaty.
‘So you’re the famous poet,’ she said, and he heard the irony in her voice. As though she knew he hadn’t written a poem in years. He worked as a cook in a diner in SoHo, was married to Malika, and had three children. They lived in a small apartment in Clinton Hills in Brooklyn.
‘Good with words. I’ve got your records at home … Haven’t played them for years.’ As she spoke she measured him up, eyeing him from head to toe. ‘Wasn’t your name Omar?’
He laughed. ‘Umar,’ he said. ‘Umar Bin Hassan.’
It was as though he escaped from his own life that night. The theater, the applause, the lights, the attention. It was so familiar, so gratifying. Brooklyn seemed light-years away.
‘I want to hear your beautiful voice in my ear,’ she whispered as she leaned over, offering him a glimpse of her breasts. They went to her apartment. They snorted and screwed until the sun came up.
He watched the clouds slowly dissipate above Central Park. Twilight colored the sky pink and purple. Only now did he really notice the street noise. The agitated honking of the cars, the wail of the sirens, the monotonous roar of the traffic. But the noises remained at a distance, reaching him in waves. He looked down below, saw umbrella-wielding pedestrians hurry along the sidewalk; they were almost like puppets scurrying into the subway. The asphalt
