Manprasad Subba
George,
the three words you laboriously uttered
before you ceased to be
beneath the avalanche of snow-white knee,
now thundering in the sky of America and everywhere,
loudly echoing even in the southern hemisphere —
I Can’t Breathe…
And the streets in chorus are singing the dirge-
I can’t breathe… I can’t breathe…
The difference between your neck and his knee —
your neck was black and all the time throbbing with fervor
while his knee weighed down as hard and cold as white boulder.
Your blackness shone like a smooth black stone image from antiquity
while under the cover of his whiteness
some blackest designs were lurking.
His white skin is not as white as your teeth
that would shine bright whenever you grinned,
nor as much white as your bones under the black skin,
nor as white as the sclera of your eyes.
O Big Floyd,
we’d seen all your soul’s brightness
when you vigorously sang rap in Houston.
You rapped in colorless voice
gushing out through the same throat
that the cop’s white boulder knee pinned down.
Today
every single word in black ink says –
if the whiteness of avalanche
falls so crushingly on the neck of time
I can’t breathe…
And the words have come out of the confinements of the books
rallying round you, O George Floyd,
singing dirge in chorus – I can’t breathe…