Poetry

Gabriel Okara – (1921 - ) Nigeria. His work deals with both colonial past and neocolonial present. The following poems contrast Western and African cultures, focusing on the differences and underplaying the complementarity that is possible between cultures and necessary to create harmony in the world. He decries the mockery and rejection of his culture by the West and he describes how, in the neocolonial era, the African elite is alienated from African culture and develops self-hatred

Piano and Drums

When at break of day at a riverside

I hear jungle drums telegraphing

the mystic rhythm, urgent, raw

like bleeding flesh, speaking of

primal youth and the beginning.

I see the panther ready to pounce,

the leopard snarling about to leap

and the hunters crouch with spears poised;

And my blood ripples, turns torrent,

topples the years and at once I’m

in my mother’s lap a suckling;

at once I’m walking simple

paths with no innovations,

rugged, fashioned with the naked

warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts

in green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.

Then I hear a wailing piano

solo speaking of complex ways

in tear-furrowed concerto;

of far-away lands

and new horizons with

coaxing diminuendo, counterpoint,

crescendo. But lost in the labyrinth

of its complexities, it ends in the middle

of a phrase at a daggerpoint.

And I, lost in the morning mist

of an age at a riverside keep

wandering in the mystic rhythm

of jungle drums and the concerto.

You Laughed and Laughed and Laughed

In your ears my song

is motor car misfiring

stopping with a choking cough;

and you laughed and laughed and laughed.

In your eyes my ante-

natal walk was inhuman, passing

your omnivorous understanding

and you laughed and laughed and laughed.

You laughed at my song,

you laughed at my walk.

Then I danced my magic dance

to the rhythm of talking –

drums pleading, but you shut your

eyes and laughed and laughed and laughed.

And then I opened my mystic

inside wide like

the sky, instead you entered your

car and laughed and laughed and laughed.

You laughed at my dance,

you laughed at my inside.

You laughed and laughed and laughed.

But your laughter was ice-block

laughter and it froze your inside, froze

your voice, froze your ears,

froze your eyes and froze your tongue.

And now it’s my turn to laugh;

but my laugher is not

ice-block laugher. For I

know not cars, know not ice-blocks.

My laughter is the fire

of the eye of the sky, the fire

of the earth, the fire of the air,

the fire of the seas and the

rivers fishes animals trees,

and it thawed your inside,

thawed your voice, thawed your

ears, thawed your eyes and

thawed your tongue.

So a meek wonder held

your shadow and you whispered;

“Why so?”

And I answered:

“Because my fathers and I

are owned by the living

warmth of the earth

through our naked feet.”

Agostinho Neto – (1922-1979) Angola. A militant worker for Angolan independence, he served several terms of imprisonment under the Portuguese colonial regime. As president of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola, he lead his country to independence and became its first president in 1975. His poetry is about the plight of the peasants and workers in Angola. They are in a state of deprivation, cut off from the joys of life and relegated to a world of servitude by the bearers of “Western Civilization.”

Night

I live

in the dark quarters of the world

without light, nor life.

Anxious to live,

I walk in the streets

feeling my way

leaning into my shapless dreams,

stumbling into servitude.

-- Dark quarters

worlds of wretchedness

where the will is watered down

and men

are confused with things.

I walk, lurching,

through the unlit

unknown streets crowded

with mystery and terror,

I, arm in arm with ghosts,

And the night too is dark.

Kinaxixi (a working class residential area in Angola)

I was glad to sit down

On a bench in Kinaxixi

at six o’clock of a hot eavning

and just sit there . . .

Someone would come

maybe

to sit beside me

And I would see the black faces

of the people going uptown

in no hurry

expressing absence in the

jumbled Kimbundu they conversed in.

I would see the tired footsteps

of the servants whose fathers are also servants

looking for love here, glory there, wanting

something more than drunkenness in every

alcohol

Neither happiness nor hate

After the sun had set

lights would be turned on and I

would wander off

thinking that our life after all is simple

too simple

for anyone who is tired and still has to walk.

Western Civilizations

Sheets of tin nailed to posts

driven in the ground

make up the house.

Some rags complete

the intimate landscape.

The sun slanting through cracks

welcomes the owner

After twelve hours of slave

labor

breaking rock

shifting rock

breaking rock

shifting rock

fair weather

wet weather

breaking rock

shifting rock

Old age comes early

a mat on dark nights

is enough when he dies

gratefully

of hunger.

Molara Ogundipe-Leslie (1940 - ) Nigeria. When Ogundipe-Leslie spoke in the U.S. in the late 60’s and early 70’s she expressed a desire to see Nigerian people as liberated as the blacks in the U.S. during the civil rights movement. But, since the tragic civil war in Nigeria from 1967-70, her vision for Nigeria has darkened. She writes of the process of colonization, African economic dependency on the West, the role of women and the question of class in Africa.

song at the African middle class

For agostinho neto

we charge through the skies of disillusion,

seeking the widening of eyes, we gaze at chaos,

speak to deadened hearts and ears stopped with

commerce. We drift around our region of clowns,

walking on air as dreams fly behind our eyes.

we forage among broken bodies, fractured minds

to find just ways retraced and new like beaten cloth.

and if they come again

will they come again?

and if they come again

will they dance this time?

will the new egungun dance** once more

resplendent in rich-glassed cloth?

will they be of their people’s needs,

rise to those needs, settle whirling rifts

salve, O festering hearts?

will they sya when the come

O my people, O my people, ho to love you delicately?

** egungun dance: religious ritual with the intention of making contact with the supernatural.

Grace Akello – (1940 - ) Uganda.

Encounter

Teach me to laugh once more

let me laugh with Africa my mother

I want to dance to her drum-beats

I am tired of her cries

Scream with laughter

roar with laughter

Oh, how I hate this groaning

Africa groans

under the load of her kwashiorkored children

she weeps

what woman would laugh

over her children’s graves

I want to laugh once again

let me laugh with you

yes, even you my brother who blames me for breeding . . .

I laugh with you

even you who sell me guns

preserving world peace

while my blood, Africa’s blood stains Earth

let laughter be my gift to you

my generous heart overflows with laughter

money and vanity harden yours

clogged in your veins, the blood no longer warms your heart

I will teach you yet

I am not bush, lion, savagery

mine are the sinews which built your cities

my sons fighting your wars

gave you victory, prestige

wherein lies the savagery in Africa . . .

Your sons in African looked our family chests

raping the very bowels of our earth

our gold lines the streets of your cities . . .

where are pavements in Africa

Laugh with me

Do not laugh at me

my smile forgives all

but greed fetters your heart

the nightmare of our encounter is not over

your overgrown offspring

swear by the western god of money and free enterprise

that they are doing their best for Africa

indeed, Africa the dumping ground

Africa the vast experimental ground

the army bases in the developing parts

enhanced military aid in the loyal parts

family planning programmes in the advanced parts

My son built your cities

What did your son do for me. . .

Grace Nichols (1950 - ) Guyana.

Praise Song for my Mother

You were

water to me

deep and bold and fathoming

You were

moon’s eye to me

rise and warm and streaming

You were

the fishes red gill to me

the flame tree’s spread to me

the crab’s leg/fried plantain smell

replenishing replenishing

Go to your wide futures, you said.

Skin Teeth

Not every skin-teeth

is a smile “Massa”

if you see me smiling

when you pass

if you see me bending

when you ask

Know that I smile

know that I bend

only the better

to rise and strike

again.

Abena P. A. Busia (1953 - ) Ghana

Liberation

We are all mothers,

and we have that fire within us,

of powerful women

whose spirits are so angry

we can laugh beauty into life

and still make you taste

the salt tears of our knowledge –

For we are not tortured

anymore;

we have seen beyond your lies and disguises,

and we have mastered the language of words,

we have mastered the speech.

And know

we have also seen ourselves.

We have stripped ourselves raw

and naked piece by piece until our flesh lies flayed

with blood on our own hands.

What terrible thing can you do to us

which we have not done to ourselves?

What can you tell us

which we didn’t deceive ourselves with

a long time ago?

You cannot know how long we cried

until we laughed

over the broken pieces of our dreams.

Ignorance

shattered us into such fragments

we had to unearth ourselves piece by piece,

to recover with our own hands such unexpected relics

even we wondered

how we could hold such treasure.

Yes, we have conceived

to forge our mutilated hopes

into the substance of visions

beyond your imaginings

to declare the pain of our deliverance:

So do not even ask,

do not ask what it is we are laboring to do this time;

Dreamers remember their dreams

when we are disturbed –

And you shall not escape

what we will make

of the broken pieces of our lives.