| Metaphor |
Simile |
Repetition |
Allusion |
| Branches of their river-rooted lives (149) |
The river was sloughing its old skin like a snake in wrinkling sunshine (135) |
The chained wrists couldn’t forget (150) |
The men sat with the griot singing from the brass bowl (146) |
| The parchment overhead of crinkling water (155) |
A Ghost Dancer like that smoke (164) |
Irons singing round their ankles (151) |
To the white sand they remembered, to the Bight of Benin, to the margins of Guinea (149) |
| Achilles’ palm brushed off centuries of repose (164) |
An uplifted oar is stronger than marble Caesar’s arresting palm (159) |
The tinkle from the coins of the river, the tinkle of irons (146) |
One elegy from Aruac to Sioux (164) |
