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ISOJE CHOU
Even After (Tchaikovsky’s problem)
In 1888 right after his 5th symphony,
Sitting right at a grand imaginary table,
Knowing the thing at last completed,
Tchaikovsky began to doubt himself.
Terribly.
Nervously.
With such violence that,
Biting his fingernails, he bit right into flesh and drew
From worn sinewy fingers old geezer blood.
In 1888 right after his 5th symphony,
Sitting right at a grand imaginary table,
Knowing the thing at last completed,
Tchaikovsky began to doubt himself.
Terribly.
Nervously.
With such violence that,
Biting his fingernails, he bit right into flesh and drew
From worn sinewy fingers old geezer blood.
Or so we may well imagine.
But what is true and recorded
(And not made up by this poem)
Are the floods of self-doubt
It came not only before
the mountain could be climbed
It came even after.
JOHN EPPEL
Cewale
A river runs past girls and boys, and swerves
as if to miss the donkey cart trotting
out of Lupane. That hint of rotting
faces, breasts, backsides...mouldering bones, serves
to remind us of Gukurahundi:
early rain that washes away the dust
of harvests, the chaff of narrowing lust.
A figure out of Spiritus Mundi,
which more than troubles the collective sight,
a figure of unlimited power,
his balls grenades, his cock a bayonet,
always confident, always in the right,
chuckles as he plucks a bank-side flower
and tucks it coyly in his epaulette.
EL HABIB LOUAI
Your Gods and Buddhas do not Read Newspapers
Five mothers never returned
from their solitary ramble
they were killed by bullets
that unluckily went astray
Four fathers were bombed
on their way to plant the seeds
for another aborted cease fire
Six school children were killed
watching colorful kites fly
the enemy of their State thought
they were reaching for the stars!
Two estranged grandparents
died on their way to pray
for another unreachable peace
Out of the Red Cross camp
streams of dark blood run
to quench the thirst
of another orphaned olive tree
I put the newspaper silently
on a table engraved with anger
& I thought again, alone:
your sacred Gods
& solitary Buddhas
do not read newspapers!
It came even after.
__________
TPB's notes: see http://www.centreforafricanpoetry.org
Cewale
A river runs past girls and boys, and swerves
as if to miss the donkey cart trotting
out of Lupane. That hint of rotting
faces, breasts, backsides...mouldering bones, serves
to remind us of Gukurahundi:
early rain that washes away the dust
of harvests, the chaff of narrowing lust.
A figure out of Spiritus Mundi,
which more than troubles the collective sight,
a figure of unlimited power,
his balls grenades, his cock a bayonet,
always confident, always in the right,
chuckles as he plucks a bank-side flower
and tucks it coyly in his epaulette.
__________
TPB's notes: see http://www.centreforafricanpoetry.org
EL HABIB LOUAI
Your Gods and Buddhas do not Read Newspapers
Five mothers never returned
from their solitary ramble
they were killed by bullets
that unluckily went astray
Four fathers were bombed
on their way to plant the seeds
for another aborted cease fire
Six school children were killed
watching colorful kites fly
the enemy of their State thought
they were reaching for the stars!
Two estranged grandparents
died on their way to pray
for another unreachable peace
Out of the Red Cross camp
streams of dark blood run
to quench the thirst
of another orphaned olive tree
I put the newspaper silently
on a table engraved with anger
& I thought again, alone:
your sacred Gods
& solitary Buddhas
do not read newspapers!
__________
TPB's notes: see http://www.centreforafricanpoetry.org
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