MNCEDISI MASHIGOANE, NIYI OSUNDARE, & HARRY GARUBA 
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MNCEDISI MASHIGOANE 
Section 29

your hands left spots on my body
section 50 had pooed and passed

when i `mumbled'
in those induced trips to the other world
you yourself observed
you yourself noted
flesh retreating to the bones
solid trouble in the eyes
such as make you think of Dingane ka Zulu!

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TPB's note:  from the www.african-writing.com

NIYI OSUNDARE 
Heart’s Eye View

Left Paris
Several heartthrobs ago
Past Madrid
Now flying over Marrakech
One fast sweep
Over the sprawling Sahara
And on to the angel
Waiting by the sea
Every wingstep brings me
Closer to your wondrous arms

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TPB's note:  from the www.african-writing.com

HARRY GARUBA 

Monkey Love

hanging from the branches of your arms
dreaming of bananas,
I long only for things prosaic
things without poetry or fire
like bread and flesh and earth
like soil and seed and water
like the body evidence of sweat,
undeodorized, fresh with odour,
neither seas nor sunsets will serve this need
I long only…
to clasp the trunk of your body
and hug you like the monkey hugs the tree
a hairy love in an embrace of leaves

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TPB's note:  from the www.african-writing.com

OSWALD MBUYISENI MTSHALI, ÉDOUARD GLISSANT, & OCTAVIO PAZ
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OSWALD MBUYISENI MTSHALI
Inside My Zulu Hut

It is a hive
without any bees
to build the walls
with golden bricks of honey.
A cave cluttered
with a millstone,
calabashes of sour milk
claypots of foaming beer
sleeping grass mats
wooden head rests
tanned goat skins
tied with riempies
to wattle rafters
blackened by the smoke
of kneaded cow dung
burning under
the three-legged pot
on the earthen floor
to cook my porridge.

_________ 

TPB's notes: claypots of foaming beer -sounds paradisial

ÉDOUARD GLISSANT
Cities

On the wool of sound some object of silence one so immense.
The issue is love, its turning towards solicitous shop windows.
Who stops who gazes? Here thought arranges the display of rags, and charm lingers on and on.
There, giant cats scratch the earth, the steel of silence and faith with no object.

translated by Betsy Wing

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TPB's notes: ps: copious copyrights declaration, possibly by translator, from the net source.

OCTAVIO PAZ
Brotherhood

I am a man; little do I last,
and the night is enormous.
But I look up. The stars write.
Unknowing, I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.

_________
TPB's notes: n/a

WEST AFRICA VERSE
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DAVID DIOP
The Renegade

My brother you flash your teeth in response to every hypocrisy
My brother with gold-rimmed glasses
You give your master a blue-eyed faithful look
My poor brother in immaculate evening dress
Screaming and whispering and pleading in the parlours of condescension
We pity you
Your country's burning sun is nothing but a shadow
On your serene ‘civilized’ brow
And the thought of your grandmother's hut
Brings blushes to your face that is bleached
By years of humiliation and bad conscience
And while you trample on the bitter red soil of Africa
Let these words of anguish keep time with your restless step
Oh I am lonely so lonely here.

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TPB's notes: "© by David Diop. Provided at no charge for educational purposes."

KOFI AWOONOR
He Journey Beyond

The bowling cry through door posts
carrying boiling pots
ready for the feasters.

Kutsiami the benevolent boatman;
When I come to the river shore
please ferry me across
I do not have on my cloth-end
the price of your stewardship.

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TPB's notes: See site http://www.poetryfoundationghana.org

DAVID DIOP
Africa

Africa my Africa
Africa of proud warriors in ancestral savannahs
Africa of whom my grandmother sings
On the banks of the distant river
I have never known you
But your blood flows in my veins
Your beautiful black blood that irrigates the fields
The blood of your sweat
The sweat of your work
The work of your slavery
Africa, tell me Africa
Is this your back that is unbent
This back that never breaks under the weight of humilation
This back trembling with red scars
And saying no to the whip under the midday sun
But a grave voice answers me
Impetuous child that tree, young and strong
That tree over there
Splendidly alone amidst white and faded flowers
That is your Africa springing up anew
springing up patiently, obstinately
Whose fruit bit by bit acquires
The bitter taste of liberty.

Original language version:

DAVID DIOP
Afrique

Afrique mon Afrique
Afrique des fiers guerriers dans les savanes ancestrales
Afrique que me chantait ma grand-mère
Au bord de son fleuve lointain
Je ne t’ai jamais connue
Mais mon regard est plein de ton sang
Ton beau sang noir à travers les champs répandu
Le sang de ta sueur
La sueur de ton travail
Le travail de l’esclavage
L’esclavage de tes enfants
Afrique dis-moi Afrique
Est-ce donc toi ce dos qui se courbe
Et se couche sous le poids de l’humilité
Ce dos tremblant à zébrures rouges
Qui dit oui au fouet sur les routes de midi
Alors gravement une voix me répondit
Fils impétueux cet arbre robuste et jeune
Cet arbre là -bas
Splendidement seul au milieu de fleurs blanches et fanées
C’est l’Afrique ton Afrique qui repousse
Qui repousse patiemment obstinément
Et dont les fruits ont peu à peu
L’amère saveur de la liberté.

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TPB's notes: "© by David Diop. Provided at no charge for educational purposes."

PAUL KLEE & ABBAS KIAROSTAMI & TENNESSEE WILLIAMS  

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a painter, a filmmaker and a playwright

ABBAS KIAROSTAMI 
A Wolf Lying in Wait

A red dotted line on the white snow
wounded game
limping away.

The full moon
reflected in water,
the water
contained in the bowl,
and the thirsty man
deep in sleep.

Moonlight
shining on a narrow path
that I won’t take.

What a pity
I was not a good host
for the snowflake
that settled on my eyelid.

White colt
red to his knees after gamboling
in a field of poppies.

Morning is white,
evening is black,
a gray sorrow
in between.

A wolf
lying in wait.

Flight
is the reward of a caterpillar
that wrapped itself
in a cocoon of silk.

A whirlwind
toppled
the shepherd’s boiling kettle
set up on top of a hill.

The smell of smoke
the smell of burning rue
the sound of a baby crying
an abode hut.

A young moon
an old wine
a new friend.
An apple fell from the tree
and I thought of
the apple’s attraction.

Translated from the Persian by Karim Emami.

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TPB' notes: abbas kiarostami's films are awesome.

______________________

PAUL KLEE
Individuality

Individuality?
is not of the substance of elements.
It is an organism, indivisibly
occupied
by elementary objects of a divergent character:
if you
were to attempt division, these parts
would die.

Myself,
for instance: an entire dramatic company.

Enter an ancestor, prophetic;
enter a hero, brutal
a rake, alcoholic, to argue
with a learned professor.
A lyrical beauty, rolling her eyes
heavenward, a case
of chronic infatuation—
enter a heavy father,
to take care of that.
enter a liberal uncle—to arbitrate…
Aunt Chatterbox gossiping in a corner.
Chambermaid Lewdie, giggling.

And I, watching it all,
astonishment in my eyes.
Poised, in my left hand
a sharpened pencil.

A pregnant woman!, a mother
is planning
her entrance—
Shushhh! you
don’t belong here
you
are divisible!
She fades.

Translated by Anselm Hollo

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TPB's notes: Paul Klee is famous for his paintings.

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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS 
I think the strange, the crazed, the queer

I think the strange, the crazed, the queer
will have their holiday this year,
I think for just a little while
there will be pity for the wild.

I think in places known as gay,
in secret clubs and private bars,
the damned will serenade the damned
with frantic drums and wild guitars.

I think for some uncertain reason,
mercy will be shown this season
to the lovely and misfit,
to the brilliant and deformed--

I think they will be housed and warmed
And fed and comforted awhile
before, with such a tender smile,
the earth destroys her crooked child.

_______ 

TPB's notes: from the collection of uncollected poems of the poet and playwright published posthumously.

ÉDOUARD GLISSANT (x2), & OCTAVIO PAZ
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ÉDOUARD GLISSANT
Cold Weather Fever

Ashes canebrakes oh your days
By eternity are foresaken
And like fancy dress our lies
Are tears mirrored into life

Shallow mirror and high tower
Death-water no ocean can confine
Beyond the digging hoe the plow
The fever and the furrowed clay

Weep that my space may bind
Space more complete upon you
Than any ocean makes an exile

My fevers furrow canebrake dead
And ash again for all such lies
More than eternity are clay.


ÉDOUARD GLISSANT
Promenade of Solitary Death

The sad boy has not moved
On a lake of roses, strewn
With pale bodies in the rosebushes
Funereal bay it has remained

The shore hesitates the sea passes
The boars are water scourers
Black is the sand, the color
Is evident in this place

The birds here cloak the murky sky
with the gray of their takeoffs
Such evidence has rendered mad
The first wave run aground

Waves from madness to madness
Pale and wan the others have followed
The rosebushes have kept the alms
Of suicides upon their surplice

The white race of frigate birds
Never comes to this repasts
They go to sound other death knells
Where the wind wears no gloves

Here there move only the flutter
Of memory and this high cry
That was heard one August noon
On the cliff and its flock

A cry of earth that deploys
The nervures of its foliage
Because love shall have searched it
Or because the rain is pleasing

A cry of woman torn open
At the edge of the fallows
Her nubile breasts divided
Between misery and moss

Cry of deadbolt and cry of osprey
And the people was asleep
The bird of prey makes its nest
Upon the living ash of the tree

And there still loves only milk
Of seaweeds this smell,
Death vivifies death
Funereal bay it has remained

But sad it has not moved
Upon its lake of hatreds, strewn
With pale bodies in the thickets
Who pardon you, O rosebushes.

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TPB's notes: translated by Jeff Humphries with Melissa Manolas in: The Collected Poems of Edouard Glissant, University of Minnesota Press 2005

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OCTAVIO PAZ
Concert in the Garden

It rained.
The hour is an enormous eye.
Inside it, we come and go like reflections.
The river of music
enters my blood.
If I say body, it answers wind.
If I say earth, it answers where?

The world, a double blossom, opens:
sadness of having come,
joy of being here.

I walk lost in my own centre.

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TPB's notes: octavio paz has a good translation of a poem by góngora (which we are unable to find)