The African Burial Ground

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They came as Congo, Guinea, and Angola,
feet tuned to rhythms of a thumb piano.
They came to work fields of grain and flax,
domesticated animals, stone and chunk, block and mortar,

To make wooden barrels, some going
from slave to hireling and half-freeman.
They assembled tongue and groove — wedged
into their place in New Amsterdam.

Many years of seasons changed the city
from Dutch to York, and dream-footed
diligent work shook their bones.
They moved Ashanti.

They lived and passed on. Covered in material, in cedar
and pine boxes, Trinity Church
possessed them in six and a half sections of land
of inclining soil.

Before examiners arrived grass and weeds overwhelmed
what was most effectively overlooked,
and tannery shops depleted there.

Did relatives and newcomers
bear shake and hurl free rock
into the landfill before building groups
came, their guitars and harmonicas
pursuing ceaselessly phantoms at meal break?

Before long, strides of lower Manhattan
swaggered overhead, back and forward
between old dissents and fresh introductions,
going from major to minor devotions,
continuously in a hurry. The snap of foot sole areas
the tap of a drum arising the dead.