Lost three this morning leaped with crazy laughter / to the waiting sharks, sang as they went under
-- Speaker (Lines 12 - 13)

Importance: This part of the poem highlights the hopelessness felt by the slaves as they are being taken from their homeland to be sold. They are willing to die rather than be sold into bondage, and the laughter represents their relief at finding some peace even though they are departing their world for the unknown.

Twenty years a trader, twenty years, / for there was wealth aplenty to be harvested / from those black fields, and I’d be trading still / but for the fevers melting down my bones
-- Speaker (Lines 90 - 94)

Importance: These four lines illustrate the remorseless nature of the slave trader, a representation of prevailing attitudes at the time about slavery. He sees the people he buys and sells only as a source of profit, never thinking about the exploitation and pain he is forcing them in...