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    For the Unnamed
    For the Unnamed
    For the Unnamed
    Ebook127 pages55 minutes

    For the Unnamed

    By Fred D'Aguiar

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    About this ebook

    For the Unnamed was originally entitled 'For the Unnamed Black Jockey Who Rode the Winning Steed in the Race Between Pico's Sarco and Sepulveda's Black Swan in Los Angeles, in 1852'. That title provided the full narrative in a nutshell: we know the names of the owners of the two horses, we know the horses' names, the place and date of the race. But apart from his colour, and his victory, we know nothing about the jockey who made the whole thing happen.Fred D'Aguiar's new book recovers and re-imagines his story. It was the most publicised race of its era with numerous press notices but he remained unnamed. We are given several perspectives on the action owner's, trainer's, the horse Black Swan's, the jockey's lover, the jockey himself. But one crucial element of identity is forgotten, and that forgetfulness speaks eloquently about the time and the freed man's circumstances in the mid-nineteenth century.Fred D'Aguiar's previous collection, Letters to America (2020), was a Poetry Book Society Winter Choice and a White Review Book of the Year.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Publishers Group
    Release dateJun 13, 2024
    ISBN9781800173422
    For the Unnamed
    Author

    Fred D'Aguiar

    Poet, novelist and playwright, Fred D’Aguiar was born in London to Guyanese parents. He grew up in Guyana, returning to England in his teens. He trained as a psychiatric nurse before reading English with African and Caribbean Studies at the University of Kent, Canterbury. He is the author of five novels, including, Children of Paradise, about Jonestown, Guyana. His first novel, The Longest Memory (Pantheon, 1994), won both the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread First Novel Award. His eight poetry book and most recent, Letters to America is a UK, Poetry Book Society Choice. His numerous plays have been staged in the UK and broadcast on BBC radio. He was awarded the Guyana Prize in Fiction and in Poetry and was Judith E. Wilson Fellow at Cambridge University. He has lived in the US since the 1990s and taught at Amherst College, University of Miami and Virginia Tech. Currently he is Professor of English at University of California Los Angeles. 

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      Book preview

      For the Unnamed - Fred D'Aguiar

      For the Unnamed

      Fred D’Aguiar

      CARCANET POETRY

      Contents

      Title Page

      Dedication

      Epigraph

      Call

      Calling

      Called

      Call, Calling, Called

      B. J.

      Ethel

      B. J.

      Ethel

      Ethel & B. J.

      B. J. Looks Back

      Dancing Salt Water

      Joyce

      Dancing Salt Water

      Saloon One

      Sepulveda

      Dancing Salt Water

      Sepulveda

      Call, Calling, Called

      B. J.

      Dancing Salt Water

      Black Swan

      Saloon Two

      Sarco

      Pico

      Joyce

      Moon One

      Black Swan

      B. J.

      Black Swan

      B. J.

      B. J. & Black Swan

      Moon Two

      B. J.

      Black Swan

      B. J.

      Black Swan

      Sepulveda

      Black Jockey & Black Swan

      Dancing Salt Water

      Black Swan

      Moon Three

      Ethel

      Ethel & Joyce

      Saloon One & Two

      Quadrille for the Unnamed

      For the unnamed

      Names

      B. J. & Ethel

      Black Swan

      Note

      About the Author

      Copyright

      For Dylan, Aniyah, Cruz & Erin

      ‘There’s no nowhere for something to become nothing.’

      Alice Notley, The Speak Angel Series

      The Players

      Sarco & Black Swan – Pedigree Horses

      Pico & Sepulveda – Owners of Sarco and Black Swan Respectively

      Black Jockey (B. J.) – Aka Nameless; Rider of Black Swan

      Ethel – His Partner

      Dancing Salt Water (D.S.W.) – Trainer of Black Swan

      Joyce – His Partner

      Saloon – Voices of the City

      Moon – Voices for All Inanimate Things

      Call, Calling Called – Narrators, Out of Time

      Call

      We gather for him:

      hundred-strong choir;

      cathedral bell tongues;

      dance troupe at traffic

      lights break out on red

      in the middle of the road;

      stadium where beats

      rock young, middle, old.

      Bring him back from dead

      too long, raise him, claim

      him from some unknown

      grave that kept him lost

      in history, stranded outside

      time, banned from his name.

      Calling

      Come back now for us

      who need you more than

      you should know or care

      you seem big to us

      time chained to your skin

      stretched by our summons

      fused to your good name

      you cannot be us

      your cord blood for ours

      if we find your name

      buried in your time

      if you answer us

      from your bed of skin

      made by history

      for us to sleep in

      that keeps us awake

      Called

      Black jockey, stranger,

      walks into a saloon,

      heads turn, jaws drop

      for no reason other

      than your black skin.

      You, nameless, strange

      to us as much as to your

      self in time, even if back

      then you knew who

      you were and did not

      care if people called you

      bad names, spat, cursed.

      We bring you back to name

      you, not for yourself,

      you’re way past caring.

      You’re here for us, as all

      History must be if served

      half-eaten for one group

      while others starve fed

      crumbs after a feast.

      Dead, you ask us living

      nothing. We need you,

      fetched from ground

      blessed by your bones

      hungry for this light.

      Call, Calling, Called

      If we can name him then no one can blame

      him for the glaring omission by his times.

      Name him and we save him from attempts

      to erase him from History that framed him.

      He jockeyed Black Swan, rider and horse won

      against wild favorite, Sarco, owned by Pico.

      Poor Sarco, earmarked for victory, foxtrotted

      through training, brushed more than pushed.

      By contrast, Black Jockey worked Black Swan

      in secret, at night, hidden in stables by day.

      What the crowd saw made them gasp twice:

      once at Black Jockey, twice, at thoroughbred.

      Sweet fortunes placed on Sarco turned sour.

      Token bets on Black Swan made sweet fortunes.

      Newsmakers, why fail to name the Black Jockey

      who championed Black Swan for Sepulveda?

      Is Mansa Musa too much? Or conqueror

      Abu Bakr II? Or magical Prester John?

      His face on a coin, his name sung by choir,

      his horse and him on a plinth in a square.

      March, 20th, 1852, Los Angeles, California,

      Black jockey no one saw fit to name,

      won the biggest race in the west of that era,

      start of a black tradition riding thoroughbreds.

      If we could see him in some lucky audience

      with the long gone and unjustly dead

      this is what we would tell him, given the chance

      to set things straight and bring him peace:

      Forget that they failed to record your name

      or accord you proper fame and reward;

      feel the free power of a horse at full pelt;

      be the one who shared that freedom;

      keep it in your heart for the rest of your days

      no matter they refused to grant you your name.

      We name you now to right back then to put

      to rest their hurt that saw you as stock.

      We see you. Say your name. What you did brought

      your horse fame, and left you as a mere

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