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Gerald Moore was born in London in 1924 and read English at Cambridge. He began to be interested in African writing during three years he spent as an extra- mural tutor in Nigeria. From 1956 to i960 he was the first director of extra-mural studies at Hong Kong University and visited China, Siam, Cambodia, and Malaya. Since i960 he has been director of extra-mural studies at Makerere College in Uganda. He is a member of the Black Orpheus committee and his first book; Seven African Writers, was published in 1962.

Ulli Beier was born in Germany in 1922 and studied literature in England. Since 1950 he has been living in Nigeria, where he is a lecturer in the department of extra-mural studies at University College, Ibadan. He is editor of the literary magazine. Black Orpheus, and in 1 96 1 helped to found Mbari, a club for Ibadan writers and artists, which is already having an influence on African cultural life. He is also joint-editor of ' Mbari PubUcations'. Among his books are Yoruba Poetry (i959)> ^^^ i^ Nigeria i960 (i960), and West African Mud Sculpture (1962).

Cover design by Massimo Vignelli

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Ramsey & Muspratt, Cambridge

Gerald Moore was born in London in 1924 and read English at Cambridge. He began to be interested in African writing during three years he spent as an extra- mural tutor in Nigeria. From 1956 to i960 he was the first director of extra-mural studies at Hong Kong University and visited China, Siam, Cambodia, and Malaya. Since i960 he has been director of extra-mural studies at Makerere College in Uganda. He is a member of the Black Orpheus committee and his first book; Seven African Writers, was published in 1962.

UUi Beier was born in Germany in 1922 and studied literature in England. Since 1950 he has been living in Nigeria, where he is a lecturer in the department of extra-mural studies at University College, Ibadan. He is editor of the literary magazine. Black Orpheus j and in 1 96 1 helped to found Mbari, a club for Ibadan writers and artists, which is already having an influence on African cultural life. He is also joint-editor of ' Mbari PubHcations*. Among his books are Yoruba Poetry (i959)j ^^t in Nigeria i960 (i960), and West African Mud Sculpture (1962).

Cover design by Massimo Vigneili

PENGUIN AFRICAN LIBRARY AP7

Edited by Ronald Segal

Modem Poetry from Africa

GERALD MOORE AND ULLI BEIER

\

Modern Poetry from Africa

EDITED BY GERALD MOORE AND ULLI BEIER

Penguin Books

\

Penguin Books Ltd, Hannondsworth, Middlesex U.S.A. : Pengviin Books Inc., 3300 Clipper Mill Road. Baltimore 11 Md AUSTRALIA: Penguin Books Pty Ltd, 762 Whitehorse Road, Mitcham, Victoria

This selection first published 1963

Made and printed in Great Britain by Cox and Wyman Ltd, London, Fakenham, and Reading

Set in Monotype Plantin

This book is S0I4 subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise disposed of without the publisher's consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published

Contents

Acknowledgements		II
Introduction		13
MADAGASCAR
Jean-Joseph Rahearivelo Four poems from Traduits
	delanuit:
	(2) *What invisible rat' (3) 'The hide of the	33
	black cow'	33
	(4) 'She whose eyes'	34
	(17) *The black glassmaker'	35
	Cactus	36
Flavien Ranaivo	Song of a Young Girl	37
	Song of a Common Lover	38
SENEGAL
Leopold Sedar Senghor	' In Memoriam	43
	Night of Sine	44
	Luxembourg 1939	45
	Totem	46
	Paris in the Snow	46
	Blues	47
	The Dead	48
	Prayer to Masks	49
	Visit	50
	All Day Long	50
	In what Tempestuous Night	51

N

CONTENTS

Leopold Sedar Senghor New York 51

You Held the Black Face 54

I will Pronounce your Name 54

Be not Amazed 55

David Diop

Birago Diop

Listen Comrades

Your Presence

The Renegade

Africa

The Vultures

To a Black Dancer

Nigger Tramp

Diptych

Omen

Vanity

Ball

Viaticum

56 57 57 58 59 59 60

62 63 63 64 64

GAMBIA

Lenrie Peters

Homecoming

Song

We have Come Home

69

70 70

GHANA

Kwesi Brew

A Plea for Mercy The Search

Ellis Ayitey Komey The Change

G, Awoonor-Williams

75 76

77

Songs of Sorrow 78

Song of War 80

The Sea Eats the Land at Home 8 1

NIGERIA

John Pepper Clark

Olokun 85

Night Rain 86

The Imprisonment of Obatala 87

	CONTENTS
John Pepper Clark	Easter	88
	For Granny (from Hospital)	88
	Ibadan	89
	Fulani Cattle	89
	Cry of Birth	90
	Abiku	91
Gabriel Okara	The Snowflakes Sail Gently
	Down	92
	Piano and Drums	93
	Were I to Choose	94
	The Mystic Drum	95
	Adhiambo	96
	Spirit of the Wind	97
	One Night at Victoria Beach	98

Frank Aig-Imoukhuede One Wife for One Man

Michael Echeruo Christopher Okigbo

Sophia

Love Apart

Eight poems from Heavens- gate: Overture

Eyes Watch the Stars Water Maid Transition Sacrifice Passion Flower Lustra Bridge Four poems from Limits Siren {& the mortar is not yet dry. . . .) (i) * Suddenly becoming

talkative' (2) ' For he was a shrub among the poplars' (3)* Banks of reed.'

100

102

103

104 104 105 105 106 106 107

107

108 108

CONTENTS

Christopher Okigho Wole Soyinka

(4) *An image insists'

Telephone Conversation

Death in the Dawn

Requiem

Prisoner

I Think it Rains

Season

Night

Abiku

CONGO (BRAZZAVILLE)

Tchicaya U TanCsi Brush-fire

Dance to the Amulets

StiU Life

A Mat to Weave

CONGO (L]E0P0LDVILLE)

Antoine-Roger Bolamha Portrait

A Fistful of News

CAPE VERDE ISLANDS

Aguinaldo Fonseca Tavern by the Sea

SAO TOME

Aldo do Espirito Santo Where are the Men Seized in

this Wind of Madness?

no

in 112 113

"5 116 117 118 118

123 123 124 124

129 130

135

139

ANGOLA
Agostinho Neto	Farewell at the Moment of
	Parting	145
Antonio Jacinto	Monangamba	147
SOUTH AFRICA
Mazisi Kunene	To the Proud	151
	The Echoes	152
	Farewell	152
	As Long as I Live	153

CONTENTS

Bloke Modisane	lonely	154
NYASALAND
David Ruhadiri	An African Thunderstorm	159
KENYA
John Mbiti	New York Skyscrapers	163
Joseph Kariuki	Come Away, my Love	164
MOgAMBIQUE
Jose Craveirinha	The Seed is in Me	167
	Three Dimensions	168
Noemia de Sousa	Appeal	169
Valente Malangatana	To the Anxious Mother	171
	Woman	172
Sources of the Poems		173
Notes on the Authors		175
Index of First lines		183

^

Acknowledgements

For permission to republish the poems in this anthology acknowledgement is made to the following:

For Awoonor- Williams to Ikyeame^ Accra; for Antoine- Roger Bolamba to Presence Africaine, Paris i for Kwesi Brew to Ikyeame; for John Clark to Black Orpheus; for Jose Craveirinha to Pierre-Jean Oswald, Paris; for Birago Diop to Presence Africaine; for David Diop to Presence Africaine and Black Orpheus; for Aguinaldo Fonseca to Pierre- Jean Oswald; for Antonio Jacinto to Pierre- Jean Oswald; for Ellis Ayitey Komey to Black Orpheus; for Valente Malangatana to Black Orpheus; for Agostinho Neto to Pierre- Jean Oswald; for Gabriel Okara to Black Orpheus; for Jean- Joseph Rabearivelo and Flavien Ranaivo to Presses Universitaires de France; for Aldo do Espirito Santo to Pierre- Jean Oswald; for Leopold Sedar Senghor to Editions du Seuil, Paris, and Black Orpheus; for Noemia de Sousa to Pierre- Jean Oswald; for Wole Soyinka to Encounter and Black Orpheus; for Tchicaya U Tam'si to Caracteres.

Introduction

Lewis Nkosi, the South African journalist^ wrote recently in the Observer, * Black consciousness really begins with the shock of discovery that one is not only black but is also non-white,^ The resonance of this remark extends in many directions and will find its peculiar echoes in many situations. The black South African makes this discovery through being utterly rejected by a hostile white-domin- ated society. But his particular pHght^ tragic enough in itselfj is not of much significance so far as the origin of the following poems is concerned. The discovery may^ however, be made in utterly different circumstances. The French African made it precisely because of his acceptance - on certain terms - by a metropolitan white society. This society was quite prepared to forgive him his colour just so long as he would clothe it decently in the culture, religion, and manners of a Western civilization. The effect of this approach was to force upon him a reappraisal of what it meant to be a non-white in such a situation. Had his colour really no more significance than this? Was he not, after all, rather a black man existing in his own rich if ruined world than a non-white entering on sufferance into another?

Thus the effect of the policy of assimilation was to turn the attention of the assimiU back upon the one factor which the colonizer wanted him to forget - his blackness. Smothered by the paternal embrace of metropolitan culture, he escaped from it to examine his own with fresh eyes and new understanding. ^

13

INTRODUCTION

This gesture, simultaneously one of rejection and asser- tion, was Negritude. In the words of Aime Cesaire, 'Blackness is not absence, but refusal.' The fact that the gesture itself was often made from the genial surroundings of a Paris cafe, that it was often an affair of the intellect and emotions rather than of manners or ways of life, does not alter its cardinal importance in the development of modern African poetry. The gesture of Negritude embraces a good deal of the poetry in this book, notably that of Senghor, David Diop, Birago Diop, and the Congolese poets U Tam'si and Bolamba. Without some understanding of it, at least in its historical importance, it is impossible to see any shape in the poetic events of the continent over the past twenty years.

The two poets of Madagascar included here, though en- thusiastically embraced by Senghor in his exciting Antholo- gie de la nouvelle poesie negre et malgache (1948), do not belong entirely in the company of their French African contemporaries. Madagascar was the last part of the African world (with which it is now generally classed) to fall under French rule, yet it was the first in which France practised her cultural policy of assimilation with even lirhited effectiveness. The island was not fully occupied by French troops until 1896, and one of the first acts of the strongly anti-clerical metropolitan government was to close down hundreds of mission schools which had already sprung up there. Soon, however, this policy was reversed and France began producing a small Malagasy elite which could assist in the administration of the country. By the 1920s Madagascar had produced a poet of genius who wrote and thought in French, Jean- Joseph Rabearivelo. This tragic and brilliant figure, with his passionate love of French literature, was so effectively assimile that he com- mitted suicide in 1937 when the local officials persistently blocked his efforts to go to France. His poetry is imdoubt- edly influenced by the symbolists; there are echoes of

14

INTRODUCTION

Laforgue's Pierrotesque tone in What invisible rati and perhaps of Rimbaud in Cactus, Yet his poetry is very strongly itself. The brilliant intensity of its imagery, like Leconte de Lisle' s, may be the feature which most marks him as a child of the tropics. Rabearivelo never hectors the reader in the modern didactic manner, but instead leads him confidently into his own visionary world. His ability to sustain, elaborate, and explore a single image throughout an entire poem, as in Cactus or The black glassmaker, distinguishes him from the more engages poets of French Africa. Furthermore, at the time when Rabeari- velo was writing, Madagascar did not regard itself as part of the African world, a world of which it was only dimly aware.

In Flavien Ranaivo, a more recent poet, Madagascar asserts its own poetic traditions more vigorously. The slangy insolent tone of his verse reveals an authentic inspiration from the popular vernacular songs of the island. So7tg of a Young Girl combines very successfully this lounging gait with a delightful impudence of language, while Song of a Common Lover employs the line-by-Hne ingenuity of the riddling ballad.

Madagascar has a third established poet in Jacques Rabemananjara. He has played a valiant part in his coun- try's liberation, and suffered imprisonment for many years after the savage suppression of the 1947 revolt. He is not represented here because his rhetorical, rather long-winded poetry does not translate well into English and is difficult to quote shortly with proper effect. Much more clearly than the other two, he belongs to the Negritude tradition, and in the company of other poet-poHticians like Senghor, Damas, Cesaire, and Keita Fodeba.

Senegal is the only part of the African mainland which really witnessed assimilation in practice. Elsewhere it was not even attempted until after 1946 and was abandoned altogether as official policy some ten years later. Leopold

15

INTRODUCTION

Sedar Senghor was one of the very few Senegalese to find his way to a French university before the war. Bom in 1906 of a Serere family in the little Portuguese settlement of Joal, he came to Paris in 1928 and soon after met the two men with whom he was to be associated as an apostle of Negritude, Aime Cesaire of Martinique and Leon Damas of French Guinea. It was Damas who first found a voice for the group of Negro 'exiles' in Paris in his bitter, stac- cato volume Pigments^ issued by G.L.M. in 1937 and later destroyed by the French police:

. . . my hatred thrived on the margin of culture the margin of theories the margin of idle talk with which they stuffed me since birth even though all in me aspired to be Negro while they ransack my Africa.*

But it was Cesaire who two years later coined the word Nigritude and established himself as the chief poet and inspiration of the movement with his great poem Cahier d'un retour au pays nataL This poem was soon afterwards hailed by Andre Breton as a surrealist masterpiece; but in his ambitious survey of neo-African culture, Muntu (Faber, 1961), the German scholar Janheinz Jahn has argued that Cesaire's purpose was far more rational and deliberate than a mere 'dive into the imconscious'. When he arranges certain words in an apparently surrealist paradox he does so in order to break their conventional association and make them anew. Thus he writes of the imprisoned hero Toussaint L'Ouverture, dying in the Jura mountains amid the snows of the Northern winter:

What I am

is a man alone imprisoned in

white

is a man alone who defies

the white cries of white death

(toussaint, toussaint

* From Pigments by L. G, Damas (G.L.M., PariSj I937)> translation by Ulli Beier.

16

INTRODUCTION

l'ouverture) is a man who fascin- ates the white hawk of white death is a man alone in the ster- ile sea of white sand is an old darky braced against the waters of the sky*

Against Jahn it could be argued that, although Cesaire's ideology embraces Negritude, his technique is unmistak- ably surrealist^ and to describe it as peculiarly negro is a piece of critical obscurantism. It is true that Senghor, who also began to write at this time, occasionally uses language in a rather similar way; but he does so with a characteristic rhetorical amplitude which woos the reader instead of shocking him.

Perhaps I was the light which slept upon your

forms fluid as a statue The green Ught which gilded youj which made

you the Sim of my splendid nightf

In Senghor's poetry all the familiar themes of Negritude appear one by one; the pervasive presence of the dead and their protective guiding influence upon the living (In Memoriam^ Night of Sine); the devastation of ancient Africa and its culture by white Europe {Paris in the Snozv); the harsh rigidity of the modern West and its desperate need for the complementing qualities of Africa (Nezv York); the warm triumphant beauty of African woman {You Held the Black Face), But a poem Uke Luxembourg J 9 39 shows another facet of Senghor, his profound love and understanding of what is great and enduring in Western achievement, his need to live in both cultures, to be what he himself calls *a cultural mulatto*.

Many of these themes recur in the slender, exquisite

* From Cahier d'un retour aupays natal by Aime C&aire (Presence Africaine, Paris, 1956), pp. 45-6. ^

t From D'autres chants (published in ^thiopiquest Boitions du Seuil, Paris, 1956).

17

INTRODUCTION

verses of Birago Diop, a contemporary of Senghor's who has spent far more of his life in Africa^ working as a govern- ment official. But in the angry, stabbing lines of David Diopj killed in an air crash at the age of thirty-three, there is no room for gentle nostalgia or forgiveness. His poems move inexorably towards a triumphant affirmation. He does not hope for better things, he commands them by the power of the word, just as Agostinho Neto does from the coffee-fields of Angola.

In the Congolese poets U Tam'si and Bolamba the influence of Cesaire is much more direct. Instead of the sonorous monotony of Senghor, they offer a series of intense, enigmatic images related to each other by associa- tion rather than by any perceptible string of meaning. Naturally such a technique is only occasionally successful. Yet, at their best, they both produce some memorable images, like U Tam'si's :

My race remembers

The taste of bronze drunk hot.

With the poets of English-speaking Africa we move to an entirely different world, one which knows little of Negritude, and generally dislikes what it knows. The dis- missive comment of Mphahlele ('To us in the multi-racial communities . . . Negritude is just so much intellectual talk, a cult') can be matched by the Nigerian Wole Soyinka, who ridicules the idea of a Tiger having to pro- claim his tigritude. This attitude is a trifle imfair, but its origins are not difficult to find. To begin with, the taste for Uterary ^ movements ' is much more Gallic than Anglo- Saxon, and there can be httle doubt that the intellectual attitudes of the colonial powers have affected their respec- tive former subjects profoundly. Again, Britain never pursued a policy of cultural assimilation but, character- istically, had no cultural policy at all. Consequently, there was far less to react against, emotionally and intellectually,

i8

INTRODUCTION

than in French Africa. But correspondingly, it was con- siderably longer before a generation of West Africans grew up who felt able to write English with real confidence and fluency. At a time when Senghor and others were already publishing in Parisian literary reviews, Nigeria and Ghana had nothing to show but a few verses strongly influenced by missionary hymns and slogans, reflecting an attitude which would make any Negritude poet see red:

My simple fathers

In childlike faith believed all things;

It cost them much

And their offspring lost a lot;

They questioned not the Ues of magic

And fetish seemed to have some logic*

So wrote the Nigerian Denis Osadebey only about a dozen years ago. Similar sentiments are still occasionally to be found in Nigerian poetry, which shows how thoroughly the job of Jesimilation, at least, was accomplished. Here a Nigerian student, writing only two or three years ago, reflects smugly how his ancestors gibbered with super- stitious terror at the mere sight of a sunrise:

What in ancestral days was fear In me is grandeur; What in ages gone was dread. In me is splendourf

Other pioneer poets of English-speaking Africa were Dei-Anang of Ghana and H. Carey Thomas of Liberia. These writers show rather more respect for indigenous culture, but their handling of the theme is somewhat super- ficial. Thus Carey Thomas points the opposite moral from Osadebey in equally flat language:

Be v/arned:

That palefaced strangers

* Six lines from Denis Osadebey, quoted by Ulli Beier iaBIack Orpheus, No. lo t Four lines by J. D. Ekwere, quoted from Nigerian Student Verse (Ibadan, 1959).

19

INTRODUCTION

With unhallowed feet

Profane this heritage our fathers gave.*

Recently poetry of this recognizably * pioneer' type has begun to appear in East Africa also. The young Kikuyu poet Joe Mutiga writes of the desecration of holy ground by the plantation of new crops :

Our customs are dug up.

And put aside, like the grass

On which the dancer trod.

And foreign crops implanted;

And we pass by, eyes on the ground.

Submitting to the foreign as ours.f

Poets like these have performed a useful function by re- establishing poetry, as an occupation for educated men, and their verses are often of great political and sociological interest; but their failure to penetrate the rich traditions either of English or of vernacular poetry afflicts their work with a total lack of style. An anthology of these poems would be an important and moving document in the history of African nationalism. In this anthology they are not included because they cannot be classified as 'modern', in the sense that they do not represent a fresh exploration of language.

It was not until about five years ago that a new genera- tion of poets began to show themselves, notably in Nigeria. With the exception of Gabriel Okara, all these young poets studied at University College, Ibadan. Hence they were able to acquire a literary culture without suffering the sense of alienation and exile which afflicted the black writers gathered in Paris twenty and thirty years ago. Having grown up and been educated in a purely African environment, their work is extraordinarily free from slo- gans or stereotypes. They are eclectic in their choice of

* Four lines from H. Carey Thomas, quoted by UUi Beier in Black Orpheus^ No. I.

t From To the Ceremonial Mugumbo by Joe Mutigaj quoted from Transitiorii 3 (Kampala, 1962).

20

INTRODUCTION

influences, which range from Dylan Thomas, Pound, and Hopkins to Shakespeare and even Aeschylus; yet out of these, each has compounded a strongly individual voice. Wole Soyinka, for instance, who studied at Ibadan before moving to Britain, is the only African poet to date who deploys a gift for Ught, sophisticated irony {Telephone Conversation^ My Next-door Neighbour). Okara is an introspective, withdrawn poet, whose best work has great beauty and resonance. Poems like One Night at Victoria Beach and The Snowflakes Sail Gently Down are among the finest things yet to come out of Nigeria. Frank Aig- Imoukhuede has demonstrated the humorous possibilities of pidgin. Does it, perhaps, also have possibilities for pathos?

Jahn has argued in Muntu that the genius of African poetry is collective:

In African poetry . . . the expression is always in the service of the content; it is never a question of expressing oneself, but of expressing something . . . Nor is the African poet ever con- cerned with his inner nature, with his individuality.*

Like so many pronouncements on African poetry, this does not seem especially true, except to the extent that it is true of all good poetry - do not all poets speak for mankind? A poem like John Pepper Clark's Night Rain tingles in every line with the sense of individual experience in a particular time and place. In general, these young poets do not seem at all intent upon expressing the collec- tive African soul, nor do they clamour in every line about being black and proud of it. The maturity and confidence of their writing is one of its most encouraging aspects.

It is interesting to see the use which has been made of vernacular poetry by two of these English-speaking poets, George Awoonor- Williams of Ghana and Mazisi Kunene of South Africa. Both have understood and assimilated the cryptic, rather oracular quality of n^uch vernacular

* Muntu, p. 148.

21

INTRODUCTION

imagery. This has given both freshness and weight to their language. Bothj incidentally, come from areas where a great deal of fine vernacular poetry has been collected, Eweland and Zululand.

Much of the poetry from Portuguese Africa is little more than a cry of sheer agony and loss. These territories are still politically and socially in a condition from which most of Africa emerged many years ago. The tiny group of assimilados (about 5,000 in Angola, after over 400 years of coastal occupation) provides the principal target of govern- ment repression. Dr Agostinho Neto, for instance, was imprisoned in Portugal for over two years until his recent escape. Yet, if few of these poets can write of anything but their immediate dilemma, their work is testimony enough to the imquenchable spirit of their humanity. An exception is Valente Malangatana who, alone among the poets in this collection, is also a painter of distinction. Like the Haitian painter-poet Max Pinchinat, his imagery has great immediacy and presence, a presence which is more than visual:

and I all fresh, fresh

breathed gentiy, wrapped in my napkins.

His two poems seem to us among the most beautiful and rewarding in the whole volimie.

Few writers on African poetry can resist the temptation to pontificate. It is interesting to see to what extent these generalizations can be squared with the reality of modern African writing as represented here. For a starting-point let us take a statement like this, of Senghor's :

Monotony of tone, that is what distinguishes poetry from prose, it is the seal of Negritude, the incantation which opens the way to essential things, the Forces of the Cosmos.*

In point of fact, it is only in Senghor's own work that a monotony of this kind is exhibited, and there it is only tolerable because of the splendour of his musical effects:

* ^thiopi'queSi p. 120. 22

INTRODUCTION

Que j'ecoute, dans la case enfumee que visite un

reflet d'ames propices Ma tete sur ton sein chaud comme un dang au sortir

du feu et fumant Que je respire Todeur de nos Morts, que je recueille

et redise leur voix vivantej que j'appreuve a Vivre avant de descendre, au dela du plongeur, dans

les hautes profondeurs du sommeil.*

David Diop exhibits a certain monotony of content, but his movement is too fierce and swift to permit any monotony of style. Could it be that Senghor was merely vindicating his own sonority?

Again, Jahn takes Jean-Paul Sartre to task for having argued in UOrphee noir that Negro poetry is *the true revolutionary poetry of our time '5 and that Negritude is the voice of a particular historical moment, when the black race has given tongue to its revolt against white rule. Against this Jahn argues, somewhat primly, that neo- African poetry is not revolutionary at all, but a return to authentic tradition, and that Negritude, far from being the voice of a particular historical moment, is the style in which all African poetry must henceforth be written :

Once for all it took the stain from Africa; it demonstrated that poetry and literature were not only possible in the African manner and out of an African attitude of mind, but that only such poetry zvas legitimate [editors' italics].!

Yet already it begins to look as though Sartre was right. In the last few years there have been signs that the wellspring of Negritude is running dry. The great period was in the forties and early fifties, and since then Cesaire, Damas, and Senghor have all been notably unproductive. Birago Diop has published only one slim volume of verse in twenty years. David Diop was killed after writing only a handful of poems and before it was possible to say in what direction his style might have moved. A^eanwhile the

* From Nutt de Sine (French text), t Muntu, p. 207.

23

INTRODUCTION

centre of poetic activity seems to have shifted from Sene- gal-Paris to Nigeria, where the last five years have seen a remarkable upsurge. And, as already pointed out, these yoimg poets 'of EngHsh expression' are not merely indif- ferent to, but actually hostile towards, the concept of Negritude.

The answer may be that Negritude has served its pur- pose in giving neo-African poets a bridgehead and a point of departure. But as Africa moves into independence, the conflicts of the core of Negritude become more and more apparent. It is no coincidence that the word itself was coined by a West Indian, or that he should also have written the most extended poetic exposition of it. The situation of the black West Indian was always essentially different from that of the continental African, and has become increasingly so as Africa itself has passed back into African hands. The black man in Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Martinique, or Jamaica grew up in a permanent state of exile. He had no name, no tolerated religion, and scarcely any distinct culture of his own, yet until recently he could not expect any position of power or influence in the new mixed societies which had been built upon his labours. Without even knowing, in the vast majority of cases, from which part of Africa his ancestors came, he was obliged to build up a romantic, idealized vision of 'Guinea', a kind of heaven to which aU good Negroes go when they die:

It's the long road to Guinea Death takes you there.*

His dilemma has been perfectly expressed by the Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen, who finds nothing except his colour to distinguish him from those who reject him and who is therefore obUged to investigate the meaning of that colour afresh:

* From Guinea by Jacques Rovimain, quoted from The Poetry of the Negro (New Yorkj I949).

24

I

INTRODUCTION

. . . All my skin (I should have said so)

all my skin - does it really come

from that Spanish marble statue? And my

fearful voice the harsh cry from my gorge? And all my bones do they come from there? ... Are you quite sure?

Is there nothing else, only that which you wrote that which you sealed with a sign of wrath. . . . Do you not see these drums in my eyes? Do you not see these drums hammering out two dry tears?

Have I not got an ancestor of night with a large black mark (blacker than the skin) a large mark written with a whip? Have I got not an ancestor from MandingOj the Congo, Dahomey?*

One reaction to this dilemma v^as to plimge into a glorifica- tion of sensuality -blood, drums, rhythmic ecstasy -such as we find in a poem like Rumba by Jose Tallet:

The climax of passion, the dancers are trembling

and ecstasy presses Jos6 to the ground.

The Bongo is thundering and in a mad whirl

the daemon has broken Tomasa's limbs.

Piqm-tiqui-pan, piqui-tiqui-pan!

Piqui-tiqui-pan, piqui-tiqui-pan!

The blackish Tomasa now falls to the ground

and down also falls Che Encamaci6n.

there tliey are rolling, convulsing, and twitchingj

with whirling drum and raging Bong6

the rumba now fades with con-con-co-mab6!

And pa-ca, pa-ca, pa-ca, pa-cal

Pam! Pam! Pamlf J

* Akanji's translation of The Name in Black Orpheus, No. 7. t Akanji's translation of Rurnha in Black Orpheus^ No. 7.

25

INTRODUCTION

It was these attitudes of alienation and protest which gave rise to the Uterary movement of Negrismo in Cuba during the late twenties, and to a similar movement in Haiti at about the same time. And these same Caribbean move- ments are the direct ancestors of Negritude.

It is interesting that Senghor's great anthology of 1948, the chef d^ceuvre of Negritude, should contain the work of only three poets from continental Africa, and those three all from Senegal. For it was in Senegal that a handful of African intellectuals were treated to the full rigours of assimilations and later to those of exile - albeit a voluntary exile in Paris. Naturally, the passionate chords of Cesaire found an echo in their hearts. Naturally, too, they found less echo in the hearts of poets brought up and educated in the bosom of a functioning African society which, even at the fuU tide of coloniaUsm, never truly resembled the Caribbean situation.

This is what makes it so dangerous for critics to try and establish a literary orthodoxy, in the manner of Jahn in Muntu :

Whether the work of an author whatever his colour, belongs to Western or African culture, depends on whether we find in it those criteria of African culture which we have set forth in the preceding chapters.*

Thus Jahn estabUshes himself as the keeper of the narrow gate which leads to the African Parnassus. Fortunately, as the following pages show, African poetry is already too rich and various to follow one path only.

Probably the nearest thing to an acceptable generaliza- tion about African poetry has been made by Senghor:

The word here is more than the image, it is the analagous

image, without even the help of metaphor or comparison. It

is enough to name the thing, and the sense appears beneath the

sign.f

* MuntUi p. 195.

t ithiopiquesj p. I08.

26

INTRODUCTION

This process is essentially one of verbal magic : the poet- magus makes by naming. It undoubtedly lies at the root of all poetry, but it is probably closer to the surface of the poet's mind in Africa than elsewhere because of the recent arrival of literacy in the area, and because he inhabits a society where a vast body of traditional ritual, dance, song, poetry, and story is still aHve. In a recent article on Ife, WiUiam Fagg and Frank Willett have argued that, because he worked in perishable -materials, the African carver was forced continually to renew his commimion with the gods, to *make' them afresh. A parallel attitude is expressed by Senghor, who is happiest when his poetry is sung to music in the traditional style and so passes into the main- stream of tradition. In discussing poetic diction he writes :

A poem is like a passage of jazz^ where the execution is just as important as the text. ... I still think that the poem is not com- plete until it is sung, words and music together.*

And in Congo he expresses contempt for the 'permanence* of ink, as compared with the true permanence of rhythmic recreation :

Oho! Congo oho! to beat out your great name on the

waters on the rivers on all memory May I move the voice of the kdras Koyate. The scribe's

ink has no memory, f

In compiling this anthology, we have imposed certain limitations upon ourselves. We have confined ourselves to black writers and to texts originally composed in one or other of the European languages spoken in Africa. The first restriction is a matter of definition - African. A collec- tion of this title might logically include the work of all good poets resident in Africa or of African background, whether black, coloured, Indian, or white. This would imply the inclusion of such well-anthologized poets as Roy Camp- bell, William Plomer, and Guy Butler, as well as the

* Ethiopiques, pp. 121 and I23.

t From Congo, published in JEthioptques.

27

INTRODUCTION

various Africaans writers. It seemed to us that such a collection would lack the more particular significance to be found in an anthology of poetry by black Africans, who at least share the experience of a historic awakening and have not hitherto been assembled for study in a convenient form. The second limitation is a matter of feasibility. There is poetry awaiting collection in hundreds of African vernaculars. But how is one to make a critical selection without being fully familiar with all the vernaculars con- cerned? How much of this poetry could be legitimately regarded as 'modern'? And how, having made a selection, could adequate translations be secured? The present dominance of European languages in African creative writing may be temporary, but there is no denying its existence or the strength of the factors making towards it.

Our concept of the modern is perhaps more difficult to define. In part it is simply a matter of quality; hence the exclusion of the rather tractarian verse of the West African pioneers. In part it is a matter of the poets' aware- ness of the modern idiom in European and American poetry. It is this awareness that enables them to use their respective languages without distracting archaism and in a way that appeals instantly to the contemporary ear.

The most important limitation we imposed was the attempt to set a high standard and to include only those poems which have other claims to attention than the mere fact of having been written by Africans. The cause of literature has been poorly served already by imcritical selection. We thought it indefensible to include bad poems for the sake of keeping everyone happy. Furthermore, anthologies based on a sense of duty rather than of pleasure are always unreadable.

The result of this policy is that some countries, such as Senegal and Nigeria, are well represented, while others do not appear at all. This is an interesting fact in itself; part of the function of an anthology of this kind is to bring out creative strength where it exists. We believe that the

28

INTRODUCTION

balance of selection here, apparently so weighted towards West Africa, represents the actual situation of African poetry at the moment. An anthology compiled five years hence may be able to announce a new pattern.

Finally, we should like to thank all those poets who have allowed us to reprint their published works and to look over their impublished manuscripts. Their generosity has made this anthology possible. Special thanks are also due to Alan Ryder, who translated all the Portuguese texts, except Neto*s Farewell at the Moment of Parting, trans- lated by the editors, and the two poems by Malangatana translated by Dorothy Guedes and Philippa Rumsey. Thanks are also due to Arnold von Bradshaw for his trans- lation of Senghor's New York. All the other translations are the work of the editors. We hope that this collection will convince even the most sceptical that African poetry not only exists, but is among the most original and exciting now being written anywhere in the world.

\i

Madagascar

\.

4

Jean- Joseph Rabearivelo

Four poems from Traduits de la nuit

2 What invisible rat

come from the walls of night

gnaws at the milky cake of the moon?

Tomorrow morning,

when it has gone,

there will be bleeding marks of teeth.

Tomorrow morning

those who have dnmk all night

and those who have abandoned their cards,

blinking at the moon

will stammer out:

'Whose is that sixpence

that rolls over the green table?'

* Ah! * one of them will add,

*our friend has lost everything

and killed himself! '

And all will snigger

and, staggering, will fall.

The moon will no longer be there:

the rat will have carried her into his hole.

The hide of the black cow is stretched, stretched but not set to dry, stretched in the sevenfold shadow.

B 33

MADAGASCAR

But who has killed the black cow,

dead without having lowed^ dead without having roared,

dead without having once been chased

over that prairie flowered with stars?

She who calves in the far half of the sky.

Stretched is the hide

on the sounding-box of the wind

that is sculptured by the spirits of sleep.

And the drum is ready

when the new-born calf,

her horns crowned with spear grass

leaps

and grazes the grass of the hills.

It reverberates there

and its incantations will become dreams

until the moment when the black cow Hves again,

white and pink

before a river of light.

She

whose eyes are prisms of sleep

and whose lids are heavy with dreams,

she whose feet are planted in the sea

and whose shiny hands appear

fuU of corals and blocks of shining salt.

She will put them in little heaps beside a misty gulf and sell them to naked sailors whose tongues have been cut out, until the rain begins to fall.

34

JEAN-JOSEPH RABEARIVELO

Then she will disappear

and we shall only see

her hair spread by the wind

like a bunch of seaweed unravelling,

and perhaps some tasteless grains of salt.

17

The black glassmaker

whose coimtless eyeballs none has ever seen,

whose shoulders none has overlooked,

that slave all clothed in pearls of glass,

who is strong as Atlas

and who carries the seven skies on his head,

one would think that the vast river of clouds might carry

him away, the river in which his loincloth is already wet.

A thousand particles of glass fall from his hands but rebound towards his brow shattered by the mountains where the winds are born.

Arid you are witness of his daily suffering

and of his endless task;

you watch his thunder-riddled agony

until the battlements of the East re-echo

the conches of the sea -

but you pity him no more

and do not even remember that his sufferings begin again

each time the sun capsizes.

35

MADAGASCAR

Cactus

{from Presque-songes)

That multitude of moulded hands

holding out flowers to the azure sky

that multitude of fingerless hands

imshaken by the wind

they say that a hidden source

wells from their untainted palms

they say that this inner source

refreshes thousands of cattle

and numberless tribes, wandering tribes

in the frontiers of the South.

Fingerless hands, springing from a source. Moulded hands, crowning the sky.

Here, when the flanks of the City were still as green

as moonbeams glancing from the forests,

when they still left bare the hills of larive

crouching like bulls upthrust,

it was upon rocks too steep even for goats

that they hid, to protect their sources,

these lepers sprouting flowers.

Enter the cave from which they came

if you seek the origin of the sickness which ravages them -

origin more shrouded than the evening

and further than the dawn -

but you will know no more than I.

The blood of the earth, the sweat of the stone,

and the sperm of the wind,

which flow together in these palms

have melted their fingers

and replaced them with golden flowers.

36

1

Flavien Ranaivo

Song of a Young Girl Oaf

tlie young man who lives down there beside the threshing floor for rice; like two banana-roots on either side the village ditch, we gaze on each other, we are lovers, but he won't marry me. Jealous

his mistress I saw two days since at the wash house coming down the path against the wind. She was proud;

was it because she wore a lamba thick and studded with coral or because they are newly bedded? However it isn't the storm that will flatten the delicate reed, nor the great sudden shower at the passage of a cloud that will startle out of his wits the blue bull. I am amazed; the big sterile rock survived the rain of the flood , and it's the fire that crackles the bad grains of maize.

37

MADAGASCAR

Such this famous smoker

who took tobacco

when there was no more hemp to burn.

A foot of hemp?

- Sprung in Andringitra^ spent in Ankaratraj

no more than cinders to us. False flattery stimulates love a little but the blade has two edges; why change what is natural?

- If I have made you sad

look at yourself in the water of repentance,

you will decipher there a word I have left.

Good-bye^ whirling puzzle,

I give you my blessing:

wrestle with the crocodile,

here are your victuals and three water-lily flowers

for the way is long.

Song of a Common Lover

Don't love me, my sweet,

like your shadow i

for shadows fade at evening

and I want to keep you

right up to cockcrow;

nor like pepper

which makes the belly hot

for then I couldn't take you

when I'm hungry;

nor like a pillow

for we'd be together in the hours of sleep

but scarcely meet by day;

nor like rice

for once swallowed you think no more of it ;

38

FLAVIEN RANAIVO

nor like soft speeches

for they quickly vanish;

nor like honey^

sweet indeed but too common.

Love me like a beautiful dream,

your life in the night,

my hope in the day;

like a piece of money,

ever with me on earth,

and for the great journey

a faithful comrade;

like a calabash,

intact, for drawing water;

in pieces, bridges for my guitar.

39

Senegal

Leopold Sedar Senghor

In Memoriam

It is Sunday.

I fear the crowd of my brothers with stony faces.

From my tower of glass filled with pain, the nagging An- cestors

I gaze at roofs and hills in the fog

In the silence - the chimneys are grave and bare.

At their feet sleep my dead, all my dreams are dust

All my dreams, the Uberal blood spills ail along the streets, mixing with the blood of the butcheries.

And now, from this observatory as from a suburb

I watch my dreams float vaguely through the streets, lie at the hills' feet

Like the guides of my race on the banks of Gambia or Saloum,

Now of the Seine, at the feet of these hills.

Let me think of my dead !

Yesterday it was Toussaint, the solemn anniversary of the sun

And no remembrance in any cemetery.

Ah, dead ones who have always refused to die, who have known how to fight death

By Seine or Sine, and in my fragile veins pushed the in- vincible blood.

Protect my dreams as you have made your sons, wanderers on delicate feet.

Oh Dead, protect the roofs of Paris in the Sunday fog

43

SENEGAL

The roofs which guard my dead

That from the perilous safety of my tower I may descend

to the streets To join my brothers with blue eyes With hard hands.

Night of Sine

Woman, rest on my brow your balsam hands, your hands

gentler than fur. The tall palmtrees swinging in the nightwind Hardly rustle. Not even cradlesongs. The rhythmic silence rocks us. Listen to its song, listen to the beating of our dark blood,

Hsten To the beating of the dark pulse of Africa in the mist of

lost villages. Now the tired moon sinks towards its bed of slack

water. Now the peals of laughter even fall asleep, and the bards

themselves Dandle their heads like children on the backs of their

mothers. Now the feet of the dancers grow heavy and heavy grows

the tongue of the singers. This is the hour of the stars and of the night that dreams And reclines on this hill of clouds, draped in her long

gown of milk. The roofs of the houses gleam gently. What are they telling

so confidently to the stars? Inside the hearth is extinguished in the intimacy of bitter

and sweet scents. Woman, light the lamp of clear oil, and let the children in

bed talk about their ancestors, like their parents. Listen to the voice of the ancients of Elissa. Like we,

exiled,

44

LEOPOLD SEDAR SENGHOR

They did not want to die, lest their seminal flood be lost in the sand.

Let me listen in the smoky hut for the shadowy visit of propitious souls.

My head on your breast glowing, like a kuskus ball smok- ing out of the fire.

Let me breathe the smell of our dead, let me contemplate and repeat their living voice, let me learn

To live before I sink, deeper than the diver, into the lofty depth of sleep.

Luxembourg 1939

This morning at the Luxembourg, this autumn at the

Luxembourg, as I Hved and reUved my youth No loafers, no water, no boats upon the water, no children,

no flowers. Ah! the September flowers and the sunburnt cries of chil- dren who defied the coming winter. Only two old boys trying to play tennis. This autumn morning without children - the children's

theatre is shut ! This Luxembourg where I cannot trace my youth, those

years fresh as the lawns. My dreams defeated, my comrades despairing, can it be

so? Behold them falling like leaves with the leaves, withered

and wounded trampled to death the colour of blood To be shovelled into what common grave? . I do not know this Luxembourg, these soldiers mounting

guard. They have put guns to protect the whispering retreat of

Senators, They have cut trenches under the bench where I first learnt

the soft flowering of lips. That notice again! Ah yes, dangerous youth!

45

SENEGAL

I watch the leaves fall into the shelters, into the ditches,

into the trenches Where the blood of a generation flows Europe is burying the yeast of nations and the hope of

newer races.

Totem

I must hide him in my innermost veins

The Ancestor whose stormy hide is shot with lightning and

thunder My animal protector, I must hide him That I may not break the barriers of scandal: He is my faithful blood that demands fidelity Protecting my naked pride against Myself and the scorn of luckier races.

Paris in the Snow

Lord, you visited Paris on the day of your birth

Because it had become paltry and bad.

You purified it with incorruptible cold,

The white death.

This morning even the factory funnels hoisted in harmony

The white flags.

'Peace to all men of good will.'

Lord, you have offered the divided world, divided Europe,

The snow of peace.

And the rebels fired their fourteen hundred cannons

Against the mountains of your peace.

Lord, I have accepted your white cold that burns worse

than salt. And now my heart melts like snow in the sun. And I forget

46

LEOPOLD SEDAR SENGHOR

The white hands that loaded the guns that destroyed the

kingdoms. The hands that whipped the slaves and that whipped you The dusty hands that slapped you, the white powdered

hands that slapped me The sure hands that pushed me into soHtude and hatred The v/hite hands that felled the high forest that dominated

Africa, That felled the Sara, erect and firm in the heart of Africa,

beautiful like the first men that were created by your

brown hands. They felled the virgin forest to turn into railway sleepers. They felled Africa's forest in order to save civilization that

was lacking in men. Lord, I can still not abandon this last hate, I know it, the

hatred of diplomats who show their long teeth And who will barter with black flesh tomorrow. My heart, oh lord, has melted like the snow on the roofs of

Paris In the sun of your Goodness, It is kind to my enemies, my brothers with the snowless

white hands. Also because of the hands of dew that lie on my burning

cheeks at night.

Blues

The spring has svv^ept the ice from all my frozen rivers My young sap trembles at the first caresses along the

tender bark. But see how in the midst of July I am blinder than the

Arctic winter! My wings beat and break against the barriers of heaven No ray pierces the deaf vault of my bitterness. What sign is there to find? What key to strike? And how can god be reached by hurling javelins?

47

SENEGAL

Royal Summer of the distant South, you will come too

late, in a hateful September! In what book can I find the thrill of your reverberation? And on the pages of what book, on what impossible lips

taste your delirious love?

The impatient fit leaves me. Oh! the dull beat of the rain

on the leaves ! Just play me your 'Solitude', Duke, till I cry myself to

sleep.

The Dead

They are lying out there beside the captured roads, all

along the roads of disaster Elegant poplars, statues of sombre gods draped in their

long cloaks of gold, Senegalese prisoners darkly stretched on the soil of France.

In vain they have cut off your laughter, in vain the darker

flower of your flesh. You are the flower in its first beauty amid a naked absence

of flowers Black flower with its grave smile, diamond of immemorial

ages. You are the slime and plasma of the green spring of the

world Of the first couple you are the flesh, the ripe belly the

milkiness You are the sacred increase of the bright gardens of

paradise

And the invincible forest, victorious over fire and thimder-

bolt. The great song of your blood will vanquish machines and

cannons Your throbbing speech evasions and lies.

48

LEOPOLD SEDAR SENGHOR

No hate in your soul void of hatred, no cunning in your

soul void of cunning. O Black Martyrs immortal race, let me speak the words of

pardon.

Prayer to Masks

Masks ! Oh Masks !

Black mask, red mask, you black and white masks. Rectangular masks through whom the spirit breathes, I greet you in silence ! And you too, my pantherheaded ancestor. You guard this place, that is closed to any feminine laugh- ter, to any mortal smile. You purify the air of eternity, here where I breathe the air

of my fathers. Masks of maskless faces, free from dimples and wrinkles. You have composed this image, this my face that bends

over the altar of white paper. In the name of your image, listen to me! Now while the Africa of despotism is dying - it is the agony

of a pitiable princess Just like Europe to whom she is connected through the

navel. Now turn your immobile eyes towards your children who

have been called And who sacrifice their lives like the poor man his last

garment So that hereafter we may cry 'here' at the rebirth of the

world being the leaven that the white flour needs. For who else would teach rhythm to the world that has

died of machines and cannons? For who else should ejaculate the cry of joy, that arouses

the dead and the wise in a new dawn? Say, who else could return the memory of life to men with

a torn hope?

49

SENEGAL

They call us cotton heads, and coffee men, and oily men. They call us men of death.

But we are the men of the dance whose feet only gain power when they beat the hard soil.

Visit

I dream in the intimate semi-darkness of an afternoon. I am visited by the fatigues of the day. The deceased of the year, the souvenirs of the decade. Like the procession of the dead in the village on the horizon

of the shallow sea. It is the same sun bedewed with illusions. The same sky unnerved by hidden presences. The same sky feared by those Vv^ho have a reckoning with

the dead. And suddenly my dead draw near to me. . , .

All Day Long

All day long, over the long straight rails

Like an inflexible will over the endless sands

Across parched Cayor and Baol where the baobabs twist

their arms in torment All day long, all along the line Past the same little stations, past black girls jostling like

birds at the gates of schools All day long, sorely rattled by the iron train and dusty and

hoarse Behold me seeking to forget Europe in the pastoral heart

of Sine!

50

LEOPOLD SEDAR SENGHOR

In what Tempestuous Night

What dark tempestuous night has been hiding your face?

And what claps of thunder frighten you from the bed

When the fragile wails of my breast tremble?

I shudder with cold, trapped in the dew of the clearing.

Oi I am lost in the treacherous paths of the forest.

Are these creepers or snakes that entangle my feet?

I sUp into the mudhole of fear and my cry is suffocated in a watery rattle.

But when shall I hear your voice again, happy luminous morn?

When shall I recognize myself again in the laughing mirror of eyes, that are large like windows?

And what sacrifice will pacify the white mask of the god- dess?

Perhaps the blood of chickens or goats, or the worthless blood in my veins?

Or the prelude of my song, the ablution of my pride?

Give me propitious words.

New York

{for jazz orchestra : trumpet solo)

I

New York! At first I was confused by your beauty, by

those great golden long-legged girls. So shy at first before your blue metallic eyes, your frosted

smile So shy. And the anguish in the depths of skyscraper streets Lifting eyes hawkhooded to the sun's eclipse. Sulphurous your Hght and Uvid the towers with heads that

thunderbolt the sky The skyscrapers which defy the storms with muscles of

steel and stone-glazed hide. But two weeks on the bare sidewalks of Manhattan

51

SENEGAL

- At the end of the third week the fever seizes you with the

pounce of a leopard Two weeks without rivers or fields, all the birds of the air Falling sudden and dead on the high ashes of flat rooftops. No smile of a child blooms, his hand refreshed in my hand. No mother's breast, but only nylon legs. Legs and breasts

that have no sweat nor smell. No tender word for there are no lips, only artificial hearts

paid for in hard cash And no book where wisdom may be read. The painter's

palette blossoms with crystals of coral. Nights of insomnia oh nights of Manhattan ! So agitated

by flickering lights, while motor-horns howl of empty

hours And while dark waters carry away hygienic loves, like

rivers flooded with the corpses of children.

Now is the time of signs and reckonings

New York ! Now is the time of manna and hyssop.

You must but listen to the trombones of God, let your

heart beat in the rhythm of blood, your blood. I saw in Harlem humming with noise with stately colours

and flamboyant smells - It was teatime at the house of the seller of pharmaceutical

products - I saw them preparing the festival of night for escape from

the day. I proclaim night more truthful than the day. It was the pure hour when in the streets God makes the

fife that goes back beyond memory spring up All the amphibious elements shining like suns. Harlem Harlem! Now I saw Harlem! A green breeze of

corn springs up from the pavements ploughed by the

naked feet of dancers Bottoms waves of silk and sword-blade breasts, water-lily

ballets and fabulous masks.

52

LEOPOLD SEDAR SENGHOR

At the feet of police-horses roll the mangoes of love from

low houses. And I saw along the sidewalks streams of white rum

streams of black milk in the blue fog of cigars. I saw the sky in the evening snow cotton-flowers and

seraphims' wings and sorcerers' plumes. Listen New York! Oh listen to your male voice of brass

vibrating with oboes, the anguish choked with tears

falling in great clots of blood Listen to the distant beating of your nocturnal heart,

rhythm and blood of the tom-tom, tom-tom blood and

tom-tom.

3

New York! I say to you: New York let black blood flow

into your blood That it may rub the rust from your steel joints, like an oil

of life. That it may give to your bridges the bend of buttocks and

the suppleness of creepers. Now return the most ancient times, the unity recovered,

the reconciUation of the Lion the Bull and the Tree Thought linked to act, ear to heart, sign to sense. There are your rivers murmuring with scented crocodiles

and mirage-eyed manatees. And no need to invent the

Sirens. But it is enough to open the eyes to the rainbow of April And the ears, above all the ears, to God who out of the

laugh of a saxophone created the heaven and the earth in

six days. And the seventh day he slept the great sleep of the Negro.

53

SENEGAL

You Held the Black Face (for Khalam)

You held the black face of the warrior between your

hands Which seemed with fateful twilight luminous. From the hill I watched the sunset in the bays of your

eyes. When shall I see my land again^ the pure horizon of your

face? When shall I sit at the table of your dark breasts? The nest of sweet decisions lies in the shade. I shall see different skies and different eyes^ And shall drink from the sources of other lipSj fresher than

lemons^ I shall sleep under the roofs of other hair, protected from

storms. But every year, when the rum of spring kindles the veins

afresh, I shall mourn anew my home, and the rain of your eyes

over the thirsty savannah.

/ will Pronounce your Name (for Tama)

I will pronounce your name, Naett, I will declaim you,

Naett! Naett, your name is mild like cinnamon, it is the fragrance

in which the lemon grove sleeps, Naett, your name is the sugared clarity of blooming coffee

trees And it resembles the savannah, that blossoms forth under

the mascuHne ardour of the midday sun. Name of dew, fresher than shadows of tamarind, Fresher even than the short dusk, when the heat of the day

is silenced.

54

LEOPOLD SEDAR SENGHOR

Naett, that is the dry tornado^ the hard clap of lightning Naett, coin of gold, shining coal, you my night, my sun! I am your hero, and now I have become your sorcerer, in

order to pronounce your names. Princess of Elissa, banished from Futa on the fateful day.

Be not Amazed

Be not amazed beloved, if sometimes my song grows dark. If I exchange the lyrical reed for the Khalam or the tama And the green scent of the ricefields, for the swiftly gallop- ing war drums. I hear the threats of ancient deities, the furious cannonade

of the god. Oh, tomorrow perhaps, the purple voice of your bard will

be silent for ever. That is why my rhythm becomes so fast, that the fingers

bleed on the Khalam. Perhaps, beloved, I shall fall tomorrow, on a restless earth Lamenting your sinking eyes, and the dark tom-tom of the

mortars below. And you will weep in the twilight for the glowing voice that sang your black beauty.

55

David Diop

Listen Comrades

Listen comrades of the struggling centuries

To the keen clamour of the Negro from Africa to the

Americas They have killed Mamba As they killed the seven of Martinsville Or the Madagascan down there in the pale light on the

prisons He held in his look comrades The warm faith of a heart without anguish And his smile despite agony Despite the wounds of his broken body Kept the bright colours of a bouquet of hope It is true that they have killed Mamba with his white hairs Who ten times poured forth for us milk and light I feel his mouth on my dreams And the peaceful tremor of his breast And I am lost again

Like a plant torn from the maternal bosom But no

For there rings out higher than my sorrows Purer than the morning where the wild beast wakes The cry of a hundred people smashing their cells And my blood long held in exile The blood they hoped to snare in a circle of words Rediscovers the fervour that scatters the mists Listen comrades of the struggling centuries

56

DAVID DIOP

To the keen clamour of the Negro from Africa to the

Americas It is the sign of the dawn The sign of brotherhood which comes to nourish the

dreams of men.

Your Presence

In your presence I rediscovered my name

My name that was hidden under the pain of separation

I rediscovered the eyes no longer veiled with fever

And your laughter like a flame piercing the shadows

Has revealed Africa to me beyond the snows of yesterday

Ten years my love

With days of illusions and shattered ideas

And sleep made restless with alcohol

The suffering that burdens today with the taste of to- morrow

And that turns love into a boundless river

In your presence I have rediscovered the memory of my blood

And necklaces of laughter hung aroimd our days

Days sparkling with ever new joys.

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 sim is nothing but a shadow

57

SENEGAL

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.

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

The slavery of your children

Africa tell me Africa

Is this you this back that is bent

This back that breaks under the weight of humiliation

This back trembling with red scars

And saying yes to the whip under the midday sun

But a grave voice answers me

Impetuous son that tree young and strong

That tree there

In splendid loneliness amidst white and faded flowers

That is Africa your Africa

That grows again patiently obstinately

And its fruit gradually acquire

The bitter taste of Hberty.

.58

DAVID DIOP

The Vultures

In those days

When civilization kicked us in the face

When holy water slapped our cringing brows

The vultures built in the shadow of their talons

The bloodstained monument of tutelage

In those days

There was painful laughter on the metallic hell of the

roads And the monotonous rhythm of the paternoster Drowned the howling on the plantations O the bitter memories of extorted kisses Of promises broken at the point of a gun Of foreigners who did not seem human Who knew all the books but did not know love But we whose hands fertilize the womb of the earth In spite of your songs of pride In spite of the desolate villages of torn Africa Hope was preserved in us as in a fortress And from the mines of Swaziland to the factories of

Europe Spring will be reborn imder our bright steps. -

To a Black Dancer

Negress my warm rumour of Africa

My land of mystery and my fruit of reason

You are the dance by the naked joy of your smile

By the offering of your breasts and secret pov/ers

You are the dance by the golden tales of marriage nights

By new tempos and more secular rhythms

Negress repeated triumph of dreams and stars

Passive mistress to the koras' assault

You are the dance of giddyness

By the magic of loins restarting the v/orld

You are the dance

59

SENEGAL

And the myths burn around me

Around me the wigs of learning

In great fires of joy in the heaven of your steps

You are the dance

And burn false gods in yovir vertical flame

You are the face of the initiate

Sacrificing his childhood before the tree-god

You are the idea of All and the voice of the Ancient

Gravely rocketed against our fears

You are the Word which explodes

In showers of light upon the shores of obUvion.

Nigger Tramp

You who move like a battered old dream

A dream transpierced by the blades of the mistral

By what bitter ways

By what muddy wanderings of accepted suffering

By what caravels drawing from isle to isle

The curtains of Negro blood torn from Guinea

Have you carried your old coat of thorns

To the foreign cemetery where you read the sky

I see in your eyes the drooping halts of despair

And dawn restarting the cottonfields and mines

I see Soxmdiata the forgotten

And Chaka the invincible

Fled to the seabed with the tales of silk and fire

I see all that

Martial music soimding the call to murder

And bellies that burst open amid snowy landscapes

To comfort the fear crouched in the entrails of cities

O my old Negro harvester of imknown lands

Lands of spice where everyone could live

What have they done with the dawn that Hfted on your

brow With your bright stones and sabres of gold

60

DAVID DIOP

Now you stand naked in your filthy prison

A quenched volcano exposed to other's laughter

To others' riches

To others' hideous greed

They called you Half- White it was so picturesque

And they shook their great jaws to the roots

Delighted at a joke not malicious in the least

But I what was I doing on your morning of wind and tears

On that morning drowned in spray

Where the ancient crowns perished

What did I do but endure seated upon my clouds

The nightly agonies

The imhealing wounds

The petrified bundles of rags in the camps of disaster

The sand was all blood

And I saw the day Uke any other day

And I sang Yeba

Yeba like a delirious beast

O buried promise

0 forsaken seed Forgive me Negro guide Forgive my narrow heart

The belated victories the abandoned armour Have patience the Carnival is over

1 sharpen the hurricane for the furrows of the future For you we will remake Ghana and Timbuktu And the guitars shuddering with a thousand strokes Great mortars booming under the blows

Pestles

Pounding

From house to house

In the coming day.

6i

Birago Diop

Diptych

The Sun hung by a thread.

In the depths of the Calabash dyed indigo

Boils the great Pot of Day.

Fearful of the approach of the Daughters of fire

The Shadow squats at the feet of the faithful.

The savannah is bright and harsh

All is sharp, forms and colours.

But in the anguished Silences made by Rumours

Of tiny sounds, neither hollov/ nor shrill.

Rises a ponderous Mystery,

A Mystery muffled and formless

Which surrounds and terrifies us.

The dark Loincloth pierced with nails of fire

Spread out on the Earth covers the bed of Night.

Fearful at the approach of the Daughters of shadow

The dog howls, the horse neighs

The Man crouches deep in his house.

The savannah is dark.

All is black, forms and colours

And in the anguished Silences made by Rumours

Of tiny sounds infinite or hollow or sharp

The tangled Paths of the Mystery

Slowly reveal themselves

For those who set out

And for those who return.

62

BIRAGO DIOP

Omen

A naked sun - a yellow sun A sun all naked at early dawn Pours v/aves of gold over the bank Of the river of yellow.

A naked sun - a white sun A sun all naked and white Pours waves of silver Over the river of white.

A naked sun - a red sun A sun all naked and red Pours v/aves of red blood Over the river of red.

Vanity

If we tellj gently, gently

All that we shall one day have to tell.

Who then will hear our voices without laughter.

Sad complaining voices of beggars

Who indeed will hear them without laughter?

If we cry roughly of our torments Ever increasing from the start of things. What eyes will watch our large mouths Shaped by the laughter of big children What eyes will watch our large mouths?

What heart will listen to our clamouring?

What ear to our pitiful anger

Which grows in us like a tumour

In the black depth of our plaintive throats?

When our Dead come with their Dead

When they have spoken to us with their clumsy voices ;

Just as our ears were deaf

63

SENEGAL

To their cries, to their wild appeals

Just as our ears were deaf

They have left on the earth their cries.

In the air, on the water, where they have traced their signs

For us, blind deaf and unworthy Sons

Who see nothing of what they have made

In the air, on the water, where they have traced their signs.

And since we did not understand our dead

Since we have never listened to their cries -

If we weep, gently, gently

If we cry roughly of our torments

What heart will listen to our clamouring.

What ear to our sobbing hearts?

Ball

A scroll of blue, an exquisite thought Moves upwards in a secret accord And the gentle pink explosion the shade filters Drowns a woman's perfume in a heavy regret.

The languorous lament of the saxophone Counts a string of troubles and vague promises And, jagged or monotonous, its raucous cry Sometimes awakes a desire I had thought dead.

Stop jazz, you scan the sobs and tears

That jealous hearts keep only to themselves.

Stop your scrap-iron din. Your uproar

Seems like a huge complaint where consent is bom.

Viaticum

In one of the three pots

the three pots to which on certain evenings

the happy souls return

the serene breath of the ancestors,

64

•:

BIRAGO DIOP

the ancestors who were men, the forefathers who were wise. Mother wetted three fingers, three fingers of her left hand: the thumb, the index and the next; I too wetted three fingers, three fingers of my right hand: the thumb, the index and the next.

With her three fingers red with blood,

with dog's blood,

with bull's blood,

with goat's blood.

Mother touched me three times.

She touched my forehead with her thumb.

With her index my left breast

And my navel with her middle finger.

I too held my fingers red with blood,

with dog's blood,

with bull's blood,

with goat's blood.

I held my three fingers to the winds

to the winds of the North, to the winds of the Levant,

to the winds of the South, to the winds of the setting sun;

and I raised my three fingers towards the Moon,

towards the full Moon, the Moon full and naked

when she rested deep in the largest pot.

Afterwards I plunged my three fingers in the sand

in the sand that had grown cold.

Then Mother said, *Go into the world, go!

They will follow your steps in life.'

Since then I go

I follow the pathways

the pathways and roads

beyond the sea and even farther,

beyond the sea and beyond the beyond;

G 65

SENEGAL

And whenever I approach the wicked,

the Men with black hearts,

whenever I approach the envious,

the Men with black hearts

before me moves the Breath of the Ancestors.

66

Gambia

Lenrie Peters

Homecoming

The present reigned supreme Like the shallow floods over the gutters

Over the raw paths where we had been. The house with the shutters.

Too strange the sudden change

Of the times we buried when we left

The times before we had properly arranged The memories that we kept.

Our sapless roots have fed

The wind-swept seedlings of another age. Luxuriant weeds have grown where we led

The Virgins to the water's edge.

There at the edge of the town

Just by the burial ground Stands the house without a shadow

Lived in by new skeletons.

That is all that is left

To greet us on the home coming After we have paced the world

And longed for returning.

69

GAMBIA

Song

Clawed green-eyed

Feline of night

Palsy-breasted

Selling old boot

On wet pavement

In hour-glass baskets

Coconut bellied

Unyielding copra

Gland exhausted

Whore fatigued

Worm-tunnelled sod

Prostituted fruit of Eve

Edging the Park trees

Like dancing Caterpillars

In folded leaves

Softened by Social Conscience

Hoxmded by Prudes

Friend of the falling star

Victim of the lonely bed. .

We have Come Home

We have come home

From the bloodless war

With simken hearts

Our boots full of pride -

From the true massacre of the soul

When we have asked

*What does it cost

To be loved and left alone?'

We have come home^

Bringing the pledge

Which is written in rainbow colours

Across the sky - for burial

70

LENRIE PETERS

But it is not the time

To lay wreaths

For yesterday's crimes

Night threatens

Time dissolves

And there is no acquaintance

With tomorrow

The gurgling drums

Echo the star

The forest howls -

And between the trees

The dark sun appears.

We have come home

When the dawn falters

Singing songs of other lands

The Death March

Violating our ears

Knowing all our lore and tears

Determined by the spinning coin.

We have come home

To the green foothills

To drink from the cry

Of warm and mellow birdsong.

To the hot beaches

Where boats go out to sea

Threshing the ocean's harvest

And the harassing, plxmging

gliding gulls shower kisses on the waves.

We have come home

Where through the lightning flash

And thundering rain

The Pestilence, the drought

The sodden spirit

Lingers on the sandy road

71

GAMBIA

Supporting the tortiired remnants

Of the flesh

That spirit which asks no favour

Of the world

But to have dignity.

72

Ghana

J

Kwesi Brew

A Plea for Mercy

We have come to your shrine to worship - We the sons of the land. The naked cowherd has brought The cows safely home. And stands silent with his bamboo flute Wiping the rain from his brow; As the birds brood in their nests Awaiting the dawn with imsung melodies; The shadows crowd on the shores Pressing their lips against the bosom of the sea; The peasants home from their labours Sit by their log fires Telling tales of long ago. Why should we the sons of the land Plead unheeded before your shrine. When our hearts are full of song And our lips tremble with sadness? • The little firefly vies with the star. The log fire with the sun The water in the calabash With the mighty Volta. But we have come in tattered penury Begging at the door of a Master.

75

GHANA

The Search

The past

Is but the cinders

Of the present;

The future

The smoke

That escaped

Into the cloud-bound sky.

Be gentle, be kind my beloved For words become memories. And memories tools In the hands of jesters. When wise men become silent. It is because they have read The palms of Christ In the face of the Buddha.

So look not for wisdom

And guidance

In their speech, my beloved.

Let the same fire

Which chastened their tongues

Into silence.

Teach us - teach us!

The rain came down.

When you and I slept away

The night's burden of our passions;

Their new-found wisdom

In quick lightning flashes

Revealed the truth

That they had been

The slaves of fools.

76

Ellis Ayitey Komey

The Change

Your infancy now a wall of memory In harmattan the locusts filled the sky Destroying the sweat put into the field And restless seas shattered canoes The fisher-folk put to sail by noon. The impatience in your teens Yet silent were your dreams With the fires in your heart Breaking the mask of innocence. The evasive soUtude in your womb And the determination of your limbs With eyes like the soaring eagle Shattering the glass of ignorance. Your infancy now a wall of memory Before this you, like the worms. Leaning on for vain indecorous dreams And the cobras with venomous tongues Licking the tepid blooms of hibiscus.

77

G. Awoonor- Williams

Songs of Sorrow Dzogbese Lisa has treated me thus It has led me among the sharps of the forest Returning is not possible And going forward is a great difficulty The affairs of this world are Hke the chameleon faeces Into which I have stepped When I clean it cannot go.*

I am on the world's extreme corner^

I am not sitting in the row with the eminent

But those who are lucky

Sit in the middle and forget

I am on the world's extreme corner

I can only go beyond and forget.

My people, I have been somewhere If I turn here, the rain beats me If I turn there the sim burns me The firewood of this world Is for only those who can take heart That is why not all can gather it. The world is not good for anybody But you are so happy with your fate; Alas ! the travellers are back All covered with debt.

* Colloquial : It [the faeces] will not go [come off].

78

G. AWOONOR-WILLIAMS

Something has happened to me

The things so great that I cannot weep;

I have no sons to fire the gim when I die

And no daughters to wail when I close my mouth

I have wandered on the wilderness

The great wilderness men call life

The rain has beaten me.

And the sharp stumps cut as keen as knives

I shall go beyond and rest.

I have no kin and no brother.

Death has made war upon our house;

And Kpeti's great household is no more.

Only the broken fence stands;

And those who dared not look in his face

Have come out as men.

How well their pride is with them.

Let those gone before take note

They have treated their offspring badly.

What is the wailing for?

Somebody is dead. Agosu himself

Alas ! a snake has bitten me

My right arm is broken.

And the tree on which I lean is fallen.

Agosu if you go tell them. Tell Nyidevu, Kpeti, and Kove That they have done us evil; Tell them their house is falling And the trees in the fence Have been eaten by termites; That the martels curse them. Ask them why they idle there While we suffer, and eat sand. And the crow and the vulture Hover always above our broken fences And strangers walk over our portion.

79

GHANA

Song of War

I shall sleep in white calico;

War has come upon the sons of men

And I shall sleep in calico;

Let the boys go forward,

Kpli and his people should go forward;

Let the white man's guns boom.

We are marching forward;

We all shall sleep in calico.

When we start, the ground shall shake;

The war is within our very huts;

Cowards should fall back

And live at home with the women;

They who go near our wives

While we are away in battle

Shall lose their calabashes when we come.

Where has it been heard before

That a snake has bitten a child

In front of its own mother;

The war is upon us

It is within our very huts

And the sons of men shall fight it

Let the white man's guns boom

And its smoke cover us

We are fighting them to die.

We shall die on the battlefield

We shall like death at no other place.

Our guns shall die with us

And our sharp knives shall perish with us

We shall die on the battlefield.

80

G. AWOONOR-WILLIAMS

The Sea Eats the Land at Home

At home the sea is in the town.

Running in and out of the cooking places.

Collecting the firewood from the hearths

And sending it back at night;

The sea eats the land at home.

It came one day at the dead of night.

Destroying the cement walls.

And carried away the fowls.

The cooking-pots and the ladles.

The sea eats the land at home;

It is a sad thing to hear the wails.

And the mourning shouts of the women.

Calling on all the gods they worship.

To protect them from the angry sea.

Aku stood outside where her cooking-pot stood.

With her two children shivering from the cold.

Her hands on her breast.

Weeping mournfully.

Her ancestors have neglected her.

Her gods have deserted her.

It was a cold Sunday morning.

The storm was raging.

Goats and fowls were struggling in the water.

The angry water of the cruel sea;

The lap-lapping of the bark water at the shore.

And above the sobs and the deep and low moans.

Was the eternal hum of the living sea.

It has taken away their belongings

Adena has lost the trinkets which

Were her dowry and her joy.

In the sea that eats the land at home.

Eats the whole land at home.

8i

Nigeria

John Pepper Clark

Olokun

I love to pass my fingers^

As tide through weeds of the sea.

And wind the tall fern-fronds

Through the strands of your hair

Dark as night that screens the naked moon:

I am jealous and passionate

Like Jehovahj God of the Jews^

And I would that you reaHze

No greater love had woman

From man than the one I have for you!

But what wakeful eyes of man. Made of the mud of this earth. Can stare at the touch of sleep The sable vehicle of dream Which indeed is the look of your eyes?

So drunken, like ancient walls We crumble in heaps at your feet; And as the good maid of the sea. Full of rich boxmties for men, You lift us all beggars to your breast.

85

NIGERIA

Night Rain

What time of night it is

I do not know

Except that like some fish

Doped out of the deep

I have bobbed up bellywise

From stream of sleep

And no cocks crow.

It is drumming hard here

And I suppose everywhere

Droning with insistent ardour upon

Our roof-thatch and shed

And through sheaves sUt open

To lighting and rafters

I cannot make out overhead

Great water drops are dribbling

Falling like orange or mango

Fruits showered forth in the wind

Or perhaps I should say so

Much like beads I could in prayer tell

Them on string as they break

In wooden bowls and earthenware

Mother is busy now deploying

About our roomlet and floor.

Although it is so dark

I know her practised step as

She moves her bins, bags, and vats

Out of the nm of water

That like ants filing out of the wood

Will scatter and gain possession

Of the floor. Do not tremble then

But turn brothers, turn upon your side

Of the loosening mats

To where the others lie.

We have drimk tonight of a spell

Deeper than the owl's or bat's

86

JOHN PEPPER CLARK

That wet of wings may not fly. Bedraggled upon the iroko^ they stand Emptied of hearts, and Therefore will not stir, no, not Even at dawn for then They must scurry in to hide. So we'll roll over on our back And again roll to the beat Of drumming all over the land And under its ample soothing hand Joined to that of the sea We will settle to sleep of the innocent.

The Imprisonment of Obatala

Those stick-insect figures ! they rock the dance Of snakes, dart after Him daddy-long arms. Tangle their loping strides to mangrove stance And He, roped in the tightening pit of alarms Dangles in His front, full length. Invincible Umbs cramped by love of their strength.

And that mischievous stir, late sown or spilt On the way between homestead and stream. Wells up in pots long stagnant on stilt. Brims out to where ancestral eyes gleam Till angry waves dam His track And caterpillars riding break their back.

One leap upon the charcoal-coloured ass Swishing ochre urine towards palace and sim. Kicking impatient tattoo on the grass. And generations unborn spared the wrong. But the cry of a child at what it knows not Evokes trebly there the droop, mud-crack, and clot.

87

NIGERIA

Easter So death

being the harvest of God when this breath

has blov^Ti uncertain above the sod, what seed, cast out in turmoil to sprout, shall in despair not beat the air v/ho falls on rock swamp or the yielding soil?

In thrall

mute with the soft pad of sheet

himg up on the wall,

I draw in my hook-feet :

hear the reaper's cry! the rap

of his crook on the door -

but the poor

dupe! opening, shall find bats far gone with my sap.

For Granny (from Hospital)

Tell me, before the ferryman's return.

What was that stirred within your soul.

One night fifteen floods today.

When upon a dugout

Mid pilgrim lettuce on the Niger,

You with a start strained me to breast:

Did you that night in the raucous voice

Of yesterday's rain.

Tumbling down banks of reed

To feed a needless stream.

Then recognize the loud note of quarrels

And endless dark nights of intrigue

In Father's house of many wives?

Or was it wonder at those footless stars

8S

JOHN PEPPER CLARK

Who in their long translucent fall Make shallow silten floors Beyond the pale of muddy waters Appear more plumbless than the skies?

Ibadan

Ibadan,

running splash of rust and gold - flung and scattered among seven hills Uke broken china in the sun.

Fulani Cattle

Contrition twines me like a snake

Each time I come upon the wake

Of your clan.

Undulating along in agony.

You face a stool for mystery:

What secret hope or knowledge.

Locked in your hump away from man.

Imbues you with courage

So mute and fierce and wan

That, not demurring nor kicking.

You go to the house of slaughter?

Can it be in the forging

Of your gnarled and crooked horn

You'd experienced passions far stronger

Than storms which brim up the Niger?

Perhaps, the drover's whip no more

On your balding hind and crest

Arouses shocks of ecstasy:

Or likely the drunken journey

From desert, through grass and forest.

89

NIGERIA

To the hungry towns by the sea Does call at least for rest - But will you not first vouchsafe to me^ As true the long knife must prevail. The patience of even your tail?

Cry of Birth

An echo of childhood stalks before me like evening shadows on the earth, rolling back into piquant memory the anguished cry of my birth;

Out of the caverns of nativity

a voice, I little knew as my own

and thought to have shed with infancy,

returns with a sharpness before unknown.

Poor castaways to this darkling shore, void out of the sea of eternity and blind, we catch by reflex horror an instant glimpse, the guilt of our see:

The souls of men are steeped in stupor who, tenants upon this wild isle imblest, sleep on, obUvious of its loud nightmare with wanton motions bedevilling our breast.

All night, through its long reaches and black I wander as lo, driven by strange passions, within and out, and for gadfly have at my back one harrowing shriek of pain and factions -

It comes ceaseless as from the wilderness ! commingled with the vague cogitation of the sea, its echo of despair and stress precedes me like a shade to the horizon.

90

JOHN PEPPER CLARK

Abiku

Coming and going these several seasons^

Do stay out on the baobab tree.

Follow where you please your kindred spirits

If indoors is not enough for you.

True, it leaks through the thatch

When floods brim the banks.

And the bats and the owls

Often tear in at night through the eaves.

And at harmattan, the bamboo walls

Are ready tinder for the fire

That dries the fresh fish up on the rack.

Still, it's been the healthy stock

To several fingers, to many more will be

Who reach to the sim.

No longer then bestride the threshold

But step in and stay

For good. We know the knife-scars

Serrating down your back and front

Like beak of the sword-fish.

And both your ears, notched

As a bondsman to this house.

Are all reHcs of your first comings.

Then step in, step in and stay

For her body is tired.

Tired, her milk going sour

Where many more mouths gladden the heart.

91

Gabriel Okara

The Snowflakes Sail Gently Down

The snowflakes sail gently down from the misty eye of the sky and fall lightly lightly on the winter-weary elms. And the branches winter-stripped and nude^ slowly with the weight of the weightless snow bow like grief-stricken mourners as white funeral cloth is slowly unrolled over deathless earth. And dead sleep stealthily from the heater rose and closed my eyes with the touch of silk cotton on water falling.

Then I dreamed a dream

in my dead sleep. But I dreamed

not of earth dying and elms a vigil

keeping. I dreamed of birds, black

birds flying in my inside, nesting

and hatching on oil palms bearing sims

for fruits and with roots denting the

uprooters' spades. And I dreamed the

uprooters tired and limp, leaning on my roots

their abandoned roots

and the oil palms gave them each a sun.

But on their palms

they balanced the blinding orbs

92

GABRIEL OKARA

and frowned with schisms on their brows - for the suns reached not the brightness of gold !

Then I awoke. I awoke

to the silently falling snow

and bent-backed elms bowing and

swaying to the winter wind like

white-robed Moslems salaaming at evening

prayer, and the earth lying inscrutable

like the face of a god in a shrine.

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 himters 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

93

NIGERIA

coaxing diminuendo, coutiterpointa 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.

Were I to Choose

When Adam broke the stone and red streams raged down to gather in the womb, an angel calmed the storm;

And I3 the breath mewed in Cain, unblinking gaze at the world without from the brink of an age

That draws from the groping Hps a breast-muted cry to thread the years. (O were I to choose)

And now the close of one and thirty turns, the world of bones is Babel, and the different tongues within are flames the head continually burning.

And O of this dark halo were the tired head free.

And when the harmattan

of days has parched the throat

94

GABRIEL OKARA

and skin^ and sucked the fever of the head away^

Then the massive dark descends^ and flesh and bone are razed. And (O were I to choose) I'd cheat the worms and silence seek in stone.

The Mystic Drum

The mystic drum beat in my inside and fishes danced in the rivers and men and women danced on land to the rhythm of my drum

But standing behind a tree

with leaves around her waist

she only smiled with a shake of her head.

Still my drum continued to beat, rippling the air with quickened tempo compelling the quick and the dead to dance and sing with their shadows -

But standing behind a tree

with leaves around her waist

she only smiled with a shake of her head.

Then the drum beat with the rhythm

of the things of the groimd

and invoked the eye of the sky

the Sim and the moon and the river gods -

and the trees began to dance,

the fishes turned men

and men turned fishes

and things stopped to grow -

95

NIGERIA

But Standing behind a tree

with leaves around her waist

she only smiled with a shake of her head.

And then the mystic drum

in my inside stopped to beat -

and men became men^

fishes became fishes

and trees, the sun and the moon

found their places, and the dead

went to the groimd and things began to grow.

And behind the tree she stood with roots sprouting from her feet and leaves growing on her head and smoke issuing from her nose and her lips parted in her smile turned cavity belching darkness.

Then, then I packed my mystic drum

and turned away; never to beat so loud any more.

Adhiambo

I hear many voices

like it's said a madman hears;

I hear trees talking

like it's said a medicine man hears.

Maybe I'm a madman, I'm a medicine man.

Maybe I'm mad, for the voices are luring me, urging me from the midnight moon and the silence of my desk to walk on wave crests across a sea.

Maybe I'm a medicine man hearing talking saps,

96

GABRIEL OKARA

seeing behind trees; but who's lost his powers of invocation.

But the voices and the trees

are now name-spelling and one figure

silence-etched across

the moonface is walking, stepping

over continents and seas.

And I raised my hand -

my trembUng hand, gripping

my heart as handkerchief

and waved and waved - and waved -

but she turned her eyes away.

Spirit of the Wind

The storks are coming now - white specks in the silent sky. They had gone north seeking fairer climes to build their homes when here was raining.

They are back with me now -

Spirits of the wind,

beyond the gods' confining

hands they go north and west and east,

instinct guiding.

But willed by the gods

I'm sitting on this rock

watching them come and go

from sunrise to simdown, with the spirit

urging within.

And urging a red pool stirs, and each ripple is

97

NIGERIA

the instinct's vital call, a desire in a million cells confined.

O God of the gods and me, shall I not heed this prayer-bell call, the noon angelus, because my stork is caged in Singed Hair and Dark Skin?

One Night at Victoria Beach

The wind comes rushing from the sea, the waves curling like mambas strike the sands and recoiling hiss in rage washing the Aladuras' feet pressing hard on the sand and with eyes fixed hard on what only hearts can see, they shouting pray, the Aladuras pray; and coming from booths behind, compelling highlife forces ears; and car lights startle pairs arm in arm passing washer-words back and forth like haggling sellers and buyers -

Still they pray, the Aladuras pray with hands pressed against their hearts and their white robes pressed against their bodies by the wind; and drinking palm-wine and beer, the people boast at bars at the beach. Still they pray.

They pray, the Aladuras pray

to what only hearts can see while dead

fishermen long dead with bones rolling

nibbled clean by nibbling fishes, follow

four dead cowries shining like stars

into deep sea where fishes sit in judgement;

98

GABRIEL OKARA

and living fishermen in dark huts sit round dim lights with Babalawo throwing their souls in four cowries on sandj trying to see tomorrow.

Still, they pray, the Aladuras pray to what only hearts can see behind the curhng waves and the sea, the stars and the subduing unanimity of the sky and their white bones beneath the sand.

And standing dead on dead sands,

I felt my knees touch living sands -

but the rushing wind killed the budding words.

99

Frank Aig-Imoukhuede

One Wife for One Man

I done try go church, I done go for court Dem all day talk about di *new culture': Dem talk about 'equality', dem mention 'divorce' Dem holler am so-tay my ear nearly cut; One wife be for one man.

My fader before my fader get him wife borku.*

E no' get equality palaver; he live well

For he be ogaf for im own house.

But dat time done pass before white man come

Wit 'im

One wife for one man.

Tell me how una J woman no go make yanga§ Wen'e know say na'im only dey. Suppose say - make God no 'gree - 'e no born at all? A'teU you dat man bin dey crazy wey start One wife for one man.

Jus' tell me how one wife fit do one man; How go fit stay all time for him house For time when beUeh done kommot. How many pickin', self, one woman fit born Wen one wife be for one man?

*borku = plenty, t oga = master or Lord. % una = variation of 'your', § yanga == vanityi pride, and perversity.

100

FRANK AIG-IMOUKHUEDE

Suppose, self, say na so-so woman your wife dey bom Suppose your wife sabe book, no'sabe make chop; Den, how you go tell man make'e no' go out Sake of dis divorce? Bo, dis culture na waya O! Wen one wife be for one man.

lOI

Michael Echeruo

Sophia

Left hand is God's hand Devil's hand across chaos When Eve began Was hers in Eden farm Through cats' tiger's fur Through Adam's core.

Multiply and till the earth

Plough on virgin land is temptation.

And there was a fountain

Of rain and grain.

Force fountain down gorge

Into valley of shoots

Is not spilling

But will not bloom on Martha

Or Vita Nuova

Eat apples by the left hand. Much sweeter. Right hand Is Right's hand, bitter. Sweet gorgeless Sophia.

102

Christopher Okigbo

From Lament of the Lavender Mist

Love Apart

The moon has ascended between us Between two pines That bow to each other

Love with the moon has ascended Has fed on our solitary stems

And we are now shadows That cling to each other But kiss the air only.

Eight poems from Heavensgate

Overture

Before you, mother Idoto, naked I standi

before your watery presence, a prodigal,

leaning on an oilbean, lost in yoiir legend. . . .

Under your power wait I on barefoot.

103

NIGERIA

watchman for the watchword at heavensgate;

out of the depths my cry give ear and hearken.

Eyes Watch the Stars

Eyes open on the beach, eyes open, of the prodigal; upward to heaven shoot where stars will fall from.

Which secret I have told into no ear;

into a dughole to hold,

not to drown with - Which secret I have planted into beachsand;

now breaks salt-white surf on the stones and me, and lobsters and shells in iodine smell — maid of the salt-emptiness, sophisticreamy, native,

whose secret I have covered up with beachsand.

Shadow of rain

over sunbeaten beach,

shadow of rain

over man with woman.

Water Maid

Bright

with the armpit dazzle of a lioness,

she answers,

wearing white light about her;

104

CHRISTOPHER OKIGBO

Transition

Sacrifice

and the waves escort her,

my lioness,

crowned with moonlight.

So brief her presence - match-flare in wind's breath - so brief with mirrors around me.

Downward . . . the waves distil her: gold crop sinking ungathered.

Watermaid of the salt emptiness, grown are the ears of the secret.

Drop of dew on green bowl fostered on leaf green bowl grows under the lamp

without flesh or colour;

under the lamp into stream of

song, streamsong, in flight into the infinite - a blinded heron thrown against the infinite -

where solitude weaves her interminable mystery imder the lamp.

The moonman has gone under the sea: the singer has gone under the shade.

Thundering drums and cannons

in palm grove :

the spirit is in ascent.

105

NIGERIA

I have visited^

on palm beam imprinted

my pentagon -

I have visitedj the prodigal. . . ,

In palm grove

long drums and cannons:

the spirit in the ascent.

Passion Flower

And the flower weeps

unbruised, Lacrimae Christie

For him who was silenced;

whose advent dumb bells in the dim light celebrate with wine song:

Messiah will come again. After the argument in heaven; Messiah will come again. Lumen mundi. . . .

Fingers of penitence

bring

to a palm grove

vegetable offering

with five

fingers of chalk.

Lustra

So would I to the hills again so would I

to where springs the fountain there to draw from

io6

CHRISTOPHER OKIGBO

Bridge

and to hilltop clamber body and soul

whitewashed in the moondew there to see from

So would I from my eye the mist so would I

through moonmist to hilltop there for the cleansing

Here is a new-laid egg here a white hen at midterm.

I am standing above you and tide above the noontide.

Listening to the laughter of waters that do not know why:

Listening to incense. . . .

I am standing above the noontide with my head above it.

Under my feet float the waters : tide blows them under.

Four poems from Limits

Siren {& the mortar is not yet dry. . . .)

I Suddenly becoming talkative

like weaverbird Summoned at offside of

dream remembered

Between sleep and waking,

I hang up my egg-shells To you of palm grove.

107

NIGERIA

Upon whose bamboo towers hang Dripping with yesterupwine

A tiger mask and nude spear. . . .

Queen of the damp half-light,

I have had my cleansing.

Emigrant with airborne nose. The he-goat-on-heat.

For he was a shrub among the poplars Needing more roots More sap to grow to sunlight Thirsting for sunlight

A low growth among the forest.

Into the soul

The selves extended their branches Into the moments of each living hour Feeling for audience

Straining thin among the echoes;

And out of the solitude

Voice and soul with selves imite

Riding the echoes

Horsemen of the apocalypse

And crowned with one self The name displays its foliage. Hanging low

A green cloud above the forest.

Banks of reed.

Mountains of broken bottles.

io8

CHRISTOPHER OKIGBO & the mortar is not yet dry, . . .

Silent the footfall

soft as cat's pawj Sandalled in velvety

in fur

So we must go. Wearing evemist against the shoulders. Trailing sun's dust sawdust of combat. With brand burning out at hand-end.

& the mortar is not yet dry. . . .

Then we must sing Tongue-tied without name or audience. Making harmony among the branches.

And this is the crisis-point. The twiUght moment between

sleep and waking; And voice that is reborn transpires Not thro' pores in the flesh

but the soul's backbone

Hurry on down

through the high-arched gate - Hurry on down

little stream to the lake; Hurry on down -

through the cinder market Hurry on down

in the wake of the dream; Hurry on down -

To rockpoint of cable

To pull by the rope

The big white elephant. . . .

& the mortar is not yet dry

& the mortar is not yet dry. . . ,

109

NIGERIA

& the dream wakes

& the voice fades

In the damp half-light. Like a shadow.

Not leaving a mark.

An image insists

from the flag-pole of the heart. The image distracts

with the cruelty of the rose. . . .

My lioness, (No shield is lead-plate against you) Wound me with your seaweed face.

Blinded like a strongroom.

Distances of your

armpit-fragrance Turn chloroform,

enough for my patience -

When you have finished, & done up my stitches, Wake me near the altar,

& this poem will be finished.

no

Wole Soyinka

Telephone Conversation

The price seemed reasonable, location

Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived

Off premises. Nothing remained

But self-confession. 'Madam,' I warned,

*I hate a wasted journey - I am African.'

Silence. Silenced transmission of

Pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came.

Lipstick coated, long gold-rolled

Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was, foully.

'how dark?' ... I had not misheard. . . . *are you

LIGHT

OR VERY DARK?' Button B. Button A. Stench

Of rancid breath of publicJiide-and-speak.

Red booth. Red pillar-box. Red double-tiered

Omnibus squelching tar. It was real! Shamed

By ill-mannered silence, surrender

Pushed dumbfounded to beg simplification.

Considerate she was, varying the emphasis -

*ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?' Revelation came.

'You mean - Hke plain or milk chocolate?'

Her assent was clinical, crushing in its light

Impersonality. Rapidly, wave-length adjusted,

I chose. 'West African sepia' - and as afterthought,

' Down in my passport.' Silence for spectroscopic

Flight of fancy, till truthfulness clanged her accent

Hard on the mouthpiece, 'what's that?' conceding

III

NIGERIA

*don't know what that is.' *Like brunette.'

'that's dark, isn't it?' *Not altogether.

Faciallyj I am brunette, but madam, you should see

The rest of me. Palm of my handj soles of my feet

Are a peroxide blonde. Friction, caused -

Foolishly madam - by sitting down, has turned

My bottom raven black - One moment madam! ' - sensing

Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap

About my ears - * Madam,' I pleaded, 'wouldn't you

rather See for yourself?'

Death in the Dawn

Traveller, you must set out

At dawn. And wipe your feet upon

The dog-nose wetness of the earth. .

Let simrise quench your lamps. And watch

Faint brush pricklings in the sky light

Cottoned feet to break the early earthworm

On the hoe. Now shadows stretch with sap

Not twilight's death and sad prostration.

This soft kindling, soft receding breeds

Racing joys and apprehensions for

A naked day. Burdened hulks retract.

Stoop to the mist in faceless throng

To wake the silent markets - swift, mute

Processions on grey byways. . . . On this

Counterpane, it was -

Sudden winter at the death

Of dawn's lone tnmipeter. Cascades

Of white feather-flakes . . . but it proved

A futile rite. Propitiation sped

Grimly on, before.

112

WOLE SOYINKA

The right foot for joy, the left^ dread And the mother prayed. Child May you never walk When the road waits, famished.

Traveller, you must set forth

At dawn.

I promise marvels of the holy hour

Presages as the white cock's flapped

Perverse impalement - as who would dare

The wrathful wings of man's Progression. . .

But such another wraith! Brother, Silenced in the startled hug of Your invention - is this mocked grimace This closed contortion - I?

Requiem

I

You leave your faint depressions Skim-flying still, on the still pond's surface. Where darkness crouches, egret wings Your love is as gossamer.

2

Hear now the dry wind's dirge. It is

The hour of lesson, and you teach

Painless dissolution in strange

Disquietudes

Sadness is twilight's kiss on earth,

3

I would not carve a pillow

Off the clouds, to nest you softly.

Yet the wonder, swift your growth, in-twining

When I fold you in my thomed bosom.

113

NIGERIA

N0W3 your blood-drops are

My sadness in the haze of day

And the sad dew at dawn, fragile

Dew-braiding rivulets in hair-roots where

Desires storm. Sad^ sad

Your feather-tear running in clefts between

Thorned buttresses, soon gone, my need

Must drink it all. Be then as

The dry sad air, and I may yield me

As the rain.

So let your palm, ridge to ridge

Be cupped with mine

And the thin sad earth between will nurture

Love's misfoimdling ~ and there it ended.

Storm-whispers swayed you outward where

Once, we cupped our hands. Alone I watched.

The earth came sifting through.

I shall sit often on the knoll

And watch the grafting.

This dismembered limb must come

Some day

To sad fruition.

I shall weep dryly on the stone That marks the gravehead silence of A tamed resolve.

I shall sit often on the knoll

Till longings crumble too

O I have felt the termite nuzzle

White entrails

And fine ants wither

In the mind's unthreaded maze.

Then may you frolic where the head Lies shaven, inherit all.

114

WOLE SOYINKA

Death-watches, cut your beetled capers On loam-matted hairs. I know this Weed-usurped knoll. The graveyard now Was nursery to her fears.

This cup I bore, redeem When yearning splice The torn branch.

This earth I pour outward to Your cry, tend it. It knows full Worship of the plough. Lest burning follow breath, learn This air was tempered in wild Cadences of fire.

No phoenix I. Submission

To her cleansing flames fulfilled

Urn's legacy.

Yet incandescing was the roar alone Sxm-searing haze pools lit the kilns That bronzed me.

It is peace to settle on life's fingers Like bran; illusive as the strained meal's Bloodless separateness.

Be still. And when this cup would crush The lightness of your hand, build no shrine Strew the ashes on your path.

Prisoner

Grey, to the low grass cropping Slung, wet-Uchened, wisps from such. Smoke heaviness, elusive of thin blades Curl inward to the earth, breed The grey hours,

115

NIGERIA

And days, and years, for do not

The wise grey temples we must build

To febrile years, here begin, not

In tears and ashes, but on the sad mocking

Threads, compulsive of the hour?

In the desert wildness, when, lone cactus. Cannibal was his love - even amidst the Crag and gorge, the leap and night-tremors Even as the potsherd stayed and the sandstorm Fell - intimations came.

In the whorled centre of the storm, a threnody But not from this. For that far companion. Made sudden stranger when the wind slacked And the centre fell, grief. And the stricken Potsherd lay, disconsolate - intimations then

But not from these. He knew only Sudden seizure. And time conquest Bound him helpless to each grey essence. Nothing remained if pains and longings Once, once set the walls. Sadness Closed him, rootless, lacking cause.

/ Think it Rains

I think it rains

That tongues may loosen from the parch Uncleave roof-tops of the mouth, hang Heavy with knowledge.

I saw it raise

The sudden cloud, from ashes. Settling They joined in a ring of grey; within The circling spirit.

•

O it must rain

These closures on the mind, binding us

Ii6

WOLE SOYINKA

In strange despairs^ teaching Purity of sadness.

And how it beats Skeined transparencies on wings Of our desires, searing dark longings In cruel baptisms.

Rain-reedsa practised in

The grace of yielding, yet unbending

From afar, this, your conjugation with my earth

Bares crouching rocks.

Season

Rust is ripeness, rust

And the wilted corn-plume;

Pollen is mating-time when swallows

Weave a dance

Of feathered arrows

Thread corn-stalks in winged

Streaks of light. And, we loved to hear

Spliced phrases of the wind, to hear

Rasps in the field, where corn leaves

Pierce like bamboo sUvers.

Now, garnerers we.

Awaiting rust on tassels, draw

Long shadows from the dusk, wreathe

Dry thatch in woodsmoke. Laden stalks

Ride the germ's decay - we await

The promise of the rust.

117

NIGERIA

Night

Your hand is heavy. Night, upon my brow,

I bear no heart mercuric like the clouds, to dare

Exacerbation from your subtle plough.

Woman as a clam, on the sea's crescent I saw your jealous eye quench the sea's Fluorescence^ dance on the pulse incessant

Of the waves. And I stood, drained Submitting like the sands, blood and brine Coursing to the roots. Night, you rained

Serrated shadows through dank leaves

Till, bathed in warm suffusion of your dappled cells

Sensations pained me, faceless, silent as night thieves.

Hide me now, when night children haunt the earth I must hear none! These misted calls will yet Undo me; naked, tmbidden, at Night's muted birth.

Abiku

In vain your bangles cast Charmed circles at my feet I am Abiku, calling for the first And the repeated time.

Must I weep for goats and cowries For palm oil and the sprinkled ash? Yams do not sprout in amulets To earth Abiku's limbs.

So when the snail is burnt in his shell. Whet the heated fragment, brand me Deeply on the breast. You must know him When Abiku calls again.

Ii8

WOLE SOYINKA

I am the squirrel teeth, cracked The riddle of the palm. Remember This, and dig me deeper still into The god's swollen foot.

Once and the repeated time, ageless Though I puke; and when you pour Libations, each finger points me near The way I came, where

The ground is wet with mourning White dew suckles flesh-birds Evening befriends the spider, trapping Fhes in wind-froth;

Night, and Abiku sucks the oil From lamps. Mothers ! I'll be the SuppHant snake coiled on the doorstep Yours the killing cry.

The ripest fruit was saddest;

Where I crept, the warmth was cloying.

In the silence of webs, Abiku moans, shaping

Mounds from the yolk.

119

Congo (Brazzaville)

Tchicaya U Tam'si

Brush-fire

The fire the river that's to say

the sea to drink following the sand

the feet the hands

within the heart to love

this river that lives in me repeoples me

only to you I said around the fire

my race

it flows here and there a river

the flames are the looks

of those who brood upon it

I said to you

my race

remembers

the taste of bronze dnmk hot.

Dance to the Amulets

Come over here our grass is rich come you fawns

gestures and stabs of sickly hands curving then unripping of conception one - who? - you shape my fate come you fawns

123

CONGO (BRAZZAVILLE)

over here the suppleness of mornings

and the blood masked here

and the rainbow-coloured dream the rope at the neck

come over here

our grass is rich here

my first coming

was the harsh explosion of a flint

solitude

my mother promised me to light.

Still Life

I was playing

when my dead sister

my knife-grandfather

my grandfather hxmg

a great fish

on a tree before our gate.

We adored aubergines

I devoured the little gourds

but I had to fast

also I cried with hunger,

if I tell you

my father does not know my mother's name

I am the witness of my age

I have often seen

carcases in the air

where my blood burns.

A Mat to Weave

he came to deliver the secret of the sun and wanted to write the poem of his life

124

TCHICAYA U TAM'SI

why crystals in his blood why globules in his laughter

his soul was ready when someone called him dirty wog

still he is left with the gentle act of his laughter and the giant tree with a living cleft what was that country where he lived a beast behind the beasts before behind the beasts

his stream was the safest of cups because it was of bronze because it was his living flesh

it was then that he said to himself no my life is not a poem

here is the tree here is the water here are the stones and then the priest of the future

it is better to love wine and rise in the morning he was advised

but no more birds in the tenderness of mothers

dirty wog

he is the younger brother of fire

the bush begins here

and the sea is no more than the memory of gulls

all standing upright tooth-to-tooth

against the spume of a deadly dance

the tree was the leafiest

the bark of the tree was the tenderest

after the forest was burnt what more to say

why was there absinthe in the wine why restore in the hearts the crocodiles the canoers and the wave of the stream

125

CONGO (BRAZZAVILLE)

the grains of sand between the teeth

is it thus that one breaks the world

no

his stream was the gentlest of cups

the safest

it was his most living flesh

here begins the poem of his life

he was trained in a school

he was trained in a studio

and he saw roads planted with sphinxes

still he is left with the soft arch of his laughter then the tree then the water then the leaves

that is why you will see him

the marching canoers have raised once more

against the haulers of french cotton

their cries

this flight is a flight of doves

the leeches did not know the bitterness

of this blood

in the purest of cups

dirty gollywog

behold my Congolese head

it is the purest of cups.

126

Congo (Leopoldville)

Antoine-Roger Bolamba

Portrait

I have my gri-gri

gri-gri

gri-gri my calm bounding awake clings to the wavy limbs of the Congo never a stormy passage for my heart bombarded with glowing oriflammes I think of my silver necklace become a himdred isles of silence I admire the obstinate patience v

of the okapi

bluebird battered in the open sky what shipwreck

plimges it to the gulf of nothingness nothingness empty of nightly entreaties

Ah! the broken resolutions ah! the screaming follies let my fate fall upon its guardians they are three villains

I say three in counting 123

who dim the ancestral mirror

but you fugitive image

I will see you on the height of dizzy anger

E 129

CONGO (LEOPOLDVILLE)

wait while I put on my brow my mask of blood

and soon you will see

my tongue flutter like a banner.

A Fistful of News

The hills hunch their backs and leap above the marshes that wash about the calabash of the Great Soul

Rumours of treason spread

like burning swords

the veins of the earth

swell with nourishing blood

the earth bears

towns villages hamlets

forests and woods

peopled with monsters horned and tentacled

their long manes are the mirror of the Sun

they are those who when night has come direct the regiments of bats and who sharpen their arms upon the stone of horror.

the souls of the guilty

float in the currents of air

on the galleys of disaster

paying no heed to the quarrels of the earthbound

with fangs of fire

they tear from the lightning its diamond heart.

Surely the scorn is a gobbet of smoking flesh surely the spirits recite the rosary of vengeance but like the black ear of wickedness they have never understood a single word

130

ANTOINE-ROGER BOLAMBA

of the scorpion's obscure tongue: stubbornness

nor the anger of the snake-wizard nor the violence of the throwing-knife can do anything against it.

131

Cape Verde Islands

Aguinaldo Fonseca

Tavern by the Sea

A distant glimmer

And a beacon spitting light

In the black face of night.

Everything is brine and yearning.

Winds with waves on their back Make tremble the tavern Which is an anchored ship.

Love passionate and brutal Amidst the open laiives And the abandon Of a prostitute's embrace.

Upon the air despairings rise In heavy swells of smoke.

BottleSj glasses, bottles . . .

- Oh ! the thirst of a sailor . . .

Tattooings pricked on skin Proclaim the pain and the bravado Of escapades in ports.

Men of every race.

Men without homeland or name

- Just men of the sea With voice of salt and wind And ships in unclouded eyes.

135

CAPE VERDE ISLANDS

Boredom and longing appear Chewing on aged pipes . . . Appear and then depart Staggering off with a drunk.

Cards, tables, and chairs. Bottles, glasses, bottles And the tavern-keeper's face Stirring up ancient quarrels.

And everything is full of sin And everything is full of sleep And everything is full of sea !

136

Sao Tome

Aldo do Espirito Santo

Where are the Men Seized in this Wind of Madness? Blood falling in drops to the earth men dying in the forest and blood falling, falling . . . on those cast into the sea. . . . Fernao Dias for ever in the story of Ilha Verde, red with blood, of men struck down in the vast arena of the quay. Alas the quay, the blood, the men, the fetters, the lash of beatings resound, resoimd, resound dropping in the silence of prostrated lives of cries, and howls of pain from men who are men no more, in the hands of nameless butchers. Ze Mulato, in the story of the quay shooting men in the silence of bodies falling. Alas Ze Mulato, Ze Mulato, The victims cry for vengeance The sea, the sea of Fernao Dias devouring human Uves is bloody red. - We are arisen - Our eyes are turned to you. Our lives entombed

139

SAO TOME

in fields of death,

men of the Fifth of February

men fallen in the furnace of death

imploring pity

screaming for life,

dead without air, without water

they all arise

from the common grave

and upright in the chorus of justice

cry for vengeance. . . .

The fallen bodies in the forest, the homes, the homes of men destroyed in the gulf of ravening fire, lives incinerated,

raise the imaccustomed chorus of justice crying for vengeance. And all you hangmen all you torturers sitting in the dock:

- What have you done with my people? . .

- What do you answer?

- Where is my people? . . . And I answer in the silence of voices raised demanding justice. ...

One by one, through all the line. . . .

For you, tormentors,

forgiveness has no name.

Justice shall be heard.

And the blood of lives fallen

in the forests of death,

innocent blood

drenching the earth

in a silence of terrors

shall make the earth fruitful,

crying for justice.

140

ALDO DO ESPIRITO SANTO

It is the flame of humanity

singing of hope

in a world without bonds

where liberty

is the fatherland of men. . .

141

Angola

Agostinho Neto

Farewell at the Moment of Parting

My mother

(oh black mothers whose children have departed)

you taught me to wait and to hope

as you have done through the disastrous hours

But in me

life has killed that mysterious hope

I wait no more

it is I who am awaited

Hope is ourselves

your children

traveUing towards a faith that feeds life

We the naked children of the bush sanzalas

unschooled urchins who play with balls of rags

on the noonday plains

ourselves

hired to burn out our lives in coffee fields

ignorant black men

who must respect the whites

and fear the rich

we are your children of the native quarters

which the electricity never reaches

men dying drunk

abandoned to the rhythm of death's tom-toms

your children

who hunger

145

ANGOLA

who thirst

who are ashamed to call you mother who are afraid to cross the streets who are afraid of men

It is ourselves

the hope of life recovered.

146

Antonio Jacinto

Monangamba

On that big estate there is no rain

it's the sweat of my brow that waters the crops :

On that big estate there is coffee ripe

and that cherry-redness

is drops of my blood turned sap.

The coffee will be roasted^

ground, and crushed,

will turn black, black with the colour of the contratado.

Black with the colour of the contratado !

Ask the birds that sing,

the streams in carefree wandering

and the high wind from inland:

Who gets up early? Who goes to toil? Who is it carries on the long road the hammock or bunch of kernels? Who reaps and for pay gets scorn rotten maize, rotten fish, ragged clothes, fifty angolares beating for biting back?

Who?

Who makes the millet grow and the orange groves to flower? - Who?

147

ANGOLA

Who gives the money for the boss to buy cars^ machinery, women

and Negro heads for the motors?

Who makes the white man prosper, grow big-bellied - get much money? -Who?

And the birds that sing, the streams in carefree wandering and the high wind from inland will answer:

- Monangambeeee. . . .

Ah! Let me at least climb the palm trees

Let me drink wine, palm wine

and fuddled by my drunkness forget

- Monangambeee. ...

148

South Africa

Mazisi Kunene

To the Proud

In the twirling jnountains overhung with mist

Foretell Nodongo the proud name of the subsequent hours

Since, when you beat the loud music of your wings^

The secret night creeps imderneath the measured time.

When you behold the fixed bulk of the sun Jubilant in its uncertain festivals Know that the symbol on which you stand shall vanish Now that the dawning awaits us with her illusions.

Assemble the little hum of your pealing boast For the sake of the reward meted to Somndeni Who sat abundantly pride-flowing Till the passer-by vultiires of heaven overtook him.

We who stood by you poverty-stricken Shall abandon you to the insanity of licence And follow the winding path Where the wisdom granaries hold increase.

Then shall your nakedness show

Teasing you before the unashamed sun.

Itching you shall unfurl the night

But we the sons of Time shall be our parents' race.

151

SOUTH AFRICA

The Echoes

Over the vast summer hills

I shall commission the maternal sim

To fetch you with her long tilted rays.

The slow heave of the valleys

Will once again roll the hymns of accompaniment

Scattering the gUtter of the milky way over the bare fields.

You will meet me

Underneath the shadow of the timeless earth

Where I lie weaving the seasons.

You will indulge in the sway dances of your kin To the time of symphonic flutes Ravishing the identity of water Ulies.

I have opened the mountain gates

So that the imposing rim

Of the Ruwenzori shall steal your image.

Even the bubbUng hps of continents (To the shy palms of Libya) Shall awake the long-forgotten age.

The quivering waters of the Zambezi river Will bear on a silvery blanket your name Leading it to the echoing of the sea.

Let me not love you alone

Lest the essence of your being

Lie heavy on my tongue

When you count so many to praise.

Farewell

O beloved farewell. . . .

Hold these leaping dreams of fire

With the skeletal hands of death

152

MAZISI KUNENE

So that when hungry night encroaches You defy her stubborn intrigues.

Do not look to where we turn and seethe We pale humanity^ like worms (The ululations might bind you to our grief) Whose feet carry the duty of life.

Farewell beloved

Even the hush that haunts the afternoon

Will sing the ding-dong drum of your ultimate joy

Where we sit by the fireside tossing the memories

Making the parts fit into each day complete;

Yet knowing ours is a return of emptiness

Farewell, yewu ... ye.

As Long as I Live

When I still can remember

When I still have eyes to see

When I still have hands to hold

When I still have feet to drag

So long shall I bear your name with all the days

So long shall I stare at you with all the stars of heaven

Though you lead me to their sadistic beasts

I shall find a way to give my burden-love

Blaming your careless truths on yesterdays.

Because I swear by life herself

When you still live, so shall I live

Turning the night into day, forcing her

To make you lie pompous on its pathways.

So shall I wander around the rim of the sun

Till her being attains your fullness

As long as I live. . . .

153

Bloke Modisane

lonely

it gets awfully lonely^

lonely;

like screaming^

screaming lonely;

screaming down dream alley,

screaming of blues, like none can hear;

but you hear me clear and loud:

echoing loud;

like it's for you I scream.

I talk to myself when I write, shout and scream to myself, then to myself scream and shout: shouting a prayer, screaming noises, knowing this way I tell the world about still lives; even maybe just to scream and shout.

is it I lack the musician's contact

direct?

or, is it true, the writer

creates

(except the trinity with God, the machine and he)

154

BLOKE MODISANE

incestuous silhouettes

to each other scream and shout,

to me shout and scream

pry and mate;

inbred deformities of loneliness.

155

Nyasaland

David Rubadiri

An African Thunderstorm

From the west

Clouds come hurrying with the wind

Turning

Sharply

Here and there

Like a plague of locusts

WhirHng

Tossing up things on its tail

Like a madman chasing nothing.

Pregnant clouds

Ride stately on its back

Gathering to perch on hills

Like dark sinister wings;

The Wind whistles by

And trees bend to let it pass.

In the village

Screams of delighted children

Toss and turn

In the din of whirHng wind.

Women -

Babies clinging on their backs -

Dart about -

In and out

Madly

The Wind whistles by

Whilst trees bend to let it pass.

159

NYASALAND

Clothes wave like tattered flags

Flying off

To expose dangling breasts

As jaggered blinding flashes

Rumble^ tremble, and crack

Amidst the smell of fired smoke

And the pelting march of the storm.

1 60

Kenya

John Mbiti

New York Skyscrapers

The weak scattered rays of yellow sun

Peeped through the hazy tissues

That blanketed them with transparent wax;

And as the wrinkled rays closed the dayj

Smoky chinmeys of New York coughed

Looking down in bended towers

And vomited sad tears of dark smoke.

163

Joseph Kariuki

Come Away, my Love

Come away, my love, from streets Where unkind eyes divide. And shop windows reflect ovir difference. In the shelter of my faithful room rest.

There, safe from opinions, being behind Myself, I can see only you. And in my dark eyes your grey Will dissolve.

The candlelight throws Two dark shadows on the wall Which merge into one as I close beside you.

When at last the lights are out. And I feel your hand in mine. Two human breaths join in one. And the piano weaves Its tmchallenged harmony.

164

Mocambique

Jose Craveirinha

The Seed is in Me

Dead or living

the seed is in me

in the universal whiteness of my bones

AUfeel

uneasiness

at the undoubted whiteness of my bones

white as the breasts of Ingrids or Marias

in Scandinavian lands

or in Polana the smart quarter

of my old native town.

All feel

uneasiness

that the mingling in my veins should be

blood from the blood of every blood

and instead of the peace ineffable of pure and simple birth

and a pure and simple death

breed a rash of complexes

from the seed of my bones.

But a night with the massaleiras heavy with green fruit batuques swirl above the sweating stones and the tears of rivers

All feel

uneasiness

at the white seed in me

breeding a rash inflamed with malediction.

167

MOCAMBIQUE

And one day

will come all the Marias of the distant nations

penitent or no

weeping

laughing

or loving to the rhythm of a song

To say to my bones forgive us, brother.

Three Dimensions

In the cabin . . .

the god of the machine

in cap and overalls

holds in his hand the secret of the pistons.

In the carriage . . .

the first-class god

elaborates his schemes in regulated air.

And on the branch-line . . .

- feet flat against the steel of the coaches -

bursting his Ixmgs

the god of the trolley.

i68

Noemia de Sousa

Appeal

Who has strangled the tired voice

of my forest sister?

On a sudden^ her call to action

was lost in the endless flow of night and day.

No more it reaches me every morning,

wearied with long journeying,

mile after mile drowned

in the everlasting cry: Macala!

No, it comes no more, still damp with dew, leashed with children and submission. . . . One child on her back, another in her womb

- always, always, always !

And a face all compassed in a gentle look, whenever I recall that look I feel my flesh and blood swell tremulous, throbbing to revelations and affinities. . . .

- But who has stopped her immeasurable look from feeding my deep hunger after comradeship that my poor table never will serve to satisfy?

lo mamane, who can have shot the noble voice

of my forest sister?

What mean and brutal rhino-whip

has lashed until it killed her?

- In my garden the seringa blooms.

But with an evil omen in its purple flower.

169

MOCAMBIQUE

in its intense inhuman scent;

and the wrap of tenderness spread by the sun

over the light mat of petals

has waited since summer for my sister's child

to rest himself upon it. ...

In vain, in vain,

a chirico sings and sings perched among the garden reeds,

for the Httle boy of my missing sister^,

the victim of the forest's vaporous dawns.

Ah, I know, I know: at the last there was a glitter

of farewell in those gentle eyes,

and her voice came like a murmur hoarse,

tragic and despairing. . . .

O Africa, my motherland, answer me:

What was done to my forest sister,

that she comes no more to the city with her eternal Httle

ones (one on her back, one in her womb), with her eternal charcoal- vendor's cry? O Africa, my motherland, you at least will not forsake my heroic sister, she shall Uve in the proud memorial of your arms !

170

Valente Malangatana

To the Anxious Mother

Into your arms I came

when you bore me, very anxious

yoUa who were so alarmed

at that monstrous moment

fearing that God might take me.

Everyone watched in silence

to see if the birth was going well

everyone washed their hands

to be able to receive the one who came from Heaven

and all the women were still and afraid.

But when I emerged

from the place where you sheltered me so long

at once I drew my first breath

at once you cried out with joy

the first kiss was my grandmother's.

And she took me at once to the place

where they kept me, hidden away

everyone was forbidden to enter my room

because everyone smelt bad

and I all fresh, fresh

breathed gently, wrapped in my napkins.

But grandmother, who seemed like a madwoman^

always looking and looking again

because the flies came at me

and the mosquitoes harried me

God who also watched over me

was my old granny's friend.

171

MOgAMBIQUE

Woman

In the cool waters of the river

we shall have fish that are huge

which shall give the sign of

the end of the world perhaps

because they will make an end of woman

woman who adorns the fields

woman who is the fruit of man.

The flying fish makes an end of searching

because woman is the gold of man

when she sings she ever seems

like the fado-singer's well-timed guitar

when she diesj I shall cut off

her hair to deUver me from sin.

Woman's hair shall be the blanket

over my coffin when another Artist

calls me to Heaven to paint me

woman's breasts shall be my pillow

woman's eye shall open up for me the way to heaven

woman's belly shall give birth to me up there

and woman's glance shall watch me

as I go up to Heaven.

172

Sources of the Poems

Aig-Imoukhuede: poem from MS,

AwooNOR- Williams: all poems from Okyeame, i (1961).

BolAiMba: aU poems from Esanzo.

Brew: both poems from Okyeame, i (196 1).

Clark: all poems from MSS.

Craveirinha: both poems from Andrade's anthology.

De Sous a: poem from Andrade's anthology.

Diop (BiRAGO): all poems from Leurres et lueurs.

Diop (David): all poems from Coups de pilon.

EcHERUo: poem from MS.

Pons EGA: poem from Andrade's anthology.

Jacinto: poem from Andrade's anthology.

Kariuki: poem from MS.

Komey: poem from Black Orpheus. ■^

Kunene: all poems from MSS.

Malangatana: both poems from MSS.

Mbiti: poem from MS.

Modisane: poem from MS.

Neto: poem from Andrade's anthology.

Okara: The Snowflakes Sail Gently Down, Adhiambo, The

Mystic Druniy and One Night at Victoria Beach from MSS;

Were I to Choose^ Piano and Drums, and Spirit of the Wind

from Black Orpheus. Okigbo: all poems from MSS. Peters: all poems from MSS.

Rabearivelo: all poems from Senghor's anthology. Ranaivo: both poems from Senghor's anthology. Rubadiri: poem from MS. Santo: poem from Andrade's anthology. Senghor: In Memoriam, Night of Sine, Luxembourg 19 39s

Totem, Paris in the Snow, Blues, The Dead, Prayer to Masks,

175

SOURCES OF THE POEMS

Visity and AH Day Long from Chants d'omhres and Hosties noiresi In what Tempestuous Night and New York from ^thiopiques; You Held the Black Face, I will Pronounce your Name, and Be not Amazed from Chants pour Naett.

Soyinka: Season from Black Orpheus; all other poems from MSS.

U Tam'si: all poems from Feu de Brousse.

The following key works are referred to above and in the

following Notes:

Senghor's anthology: Nouvelle Anthologie de la poesie negre et malgache, edited by L. S. Senghor, with an introduction UOrphee noir by Jean-Paul Sartre (Paris, Presses Universi- taires de France, 1948).

Andrade's Caderno: Caderno dapoesia negra de expressdo portu- guesa edited by Mario de Andrade (Lisbon, 1953).

Andrade's anthology: Antologia da poesia negra de expressao portuguesa edited by Mario de Andrade and preceded by Cultura negro-africana e assimilacdo (Paris, Oswald, 1958).

Black Orpheus : Journal of African and Afro-American Litera- ture, published twice or thrice yearly since 1957, from the Ministry of Education, Ibadan, Nigeria.

Presence Africaine: Cultural Review of the Negro World, pub- lished regularly since 1947, of recent years bi-monthly and in both French and English editions, by Presence Africaine, Paris.

176

Notes on the Authors

/ /

Notes on the Authors

Aig-ImoukhuedEj Frank: b. 1935 at Ediinabon near Ife in the Yoruba country of Western Nigeria^ though his home is in Benin Province. Attended at least fifteen primary schools, then Igbobi College and University College^ Ibadan, where he contributed poetry to J.P. Clark's The Horn. Recently worked for a national daily in Lagos and is now back in Ibadan as an Information Officer. Has written a number of plays for broadcasting. The first of the young Nigerian poets to attempt writing in pidgin English. Two of his poems have appeared in Black Orpheus.

AwooNOR-WiLLiAMSj George: b. 1935 at Wheta, near Keta in the Togo Region of Ghana, of a Sierra Leonian father and a Togolese mother. Educated at Achimota and the University of Ghana, where he now works in the Institute of African Studies, speciaHzing in vernacular poetry. Edits the Ghanaian literary review Okyeame, in which some of his poems have appeared.

BoLAMBA, Antoine-Roger: born in the former Belgian Congo. Has pubUshed numerous articles and poems in the review La Voix du Congolais, of which he was Editor. Influ- enced by Cesaire. Has published Esanzo, poems (Presence Africaine, 1956).

Brew, Kwesi: b. 1928 at Cape Coast in Ghana. Graduated at the University of Ghana. Published poetry in the first number of the Ghanaian literary review Okyeame. Now working at the Foreign Office at Accra.

Clark, John Pepper: b. 1935 in the Ijaw country of the Niger Delta, Nigeria. Educated at Government College, Warri, and the University College, Ibadan. While at Ibadan founded an influential poetry magazine, The Horn. Since i960 has worked as a journalist in Ibadan and Lagos and is now at

179

NOTES ON THE AUTHORS

Princeton on a fellowship. He has published several poems in Black Orpheus and his first play. Song of a Goat, was produced at Ibadan and Enugu in 1962. A free spirit and an abundant talent. Has published Song of a Goat, play (Ibadan, Mbari, 1962) and Poems (Mbari, 1962).

Craveirinha, Jose: b. 1922 at Lourengo Marques, where he works as a journaUst. His poems have appeared in various periodicals and in Andrade's anthology.

De Sousa, Noemia: b. 1927 at Louren9o Marques. The first African woman to achieve a genuine reputation as a modern poet, she has published poetry in a number of BraziUan, Angolan, and Mozambique journals and in Andrade's Caderno and anthology.

Diop, BiRAGo; b. 1906 at Dakar, Senegal. Studied at Lycee Faidherbe in St Louis and later quaUfied as a veterinary surgeon. Has spent much of his Hfe in Upper Volta as a government veterinary officer. His output is small, but care- fully and exquisitely composed. Had several poems in Senghor's anthology. Has published Leurres et lueurs, poems (Presence Africaine, i960), Les Contes d' Amadou Koumba (Paris, Fasquelle, 1947), Les Nouveaux Contes d* Amadou Koumba (Presence Africaine, 1958).

Diop, David: b. 1927 at Bordeaux of a Senegalese father and a Cameroonian mother. Killed in an air-crash off Dakar in i960. Throughout his short life Diop was in poor health and was often in hospital. Moved frequently from his childhood onwards between France and West Africa. Was a regular contributor to Presence Africaine and had several early poems in Senghor's anthology. Has published Coups depilon,poQxns (Presence Africaine, 1956).

EcHERUO, Michael: b. 1937 in Owerri Province in the Ibo country of Eastern Nigeria. Educated at Stella Maris College^ Port Harcourt, and University College, Ibadan, where he read English. Now lecturing in English at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, but is at present at Cornell on a fellowship. He produced J. P. Clark's Song of a Goat at Enugu in 1962.

Fonseca, Aguinaldo: b. 1922 in the Cape Verde Islands. Has worked on nimierous literary reviews, including Seara Nova, AtlanticOi and Nundo Literario and has contributed to Andrade's anthology. Has published Linha do horizonte,

180

NOTES ON THE AUTHORS

poems (Edi^ao da Seccao de Cabo Verde da Casa dos Estudantes do Imperioj Lisbon, 195 1).

JacintOj Antonio: bom in Luanda, Angola. His poems have appeared in Andrade's Caderno and anthology.

KariukIj Joseph: b. 1929 in the Kikuyu country of Kenya. Educated at Makerere College in Uganda and taught for several years in Kenya before coming to England to read English at ICing's College, Cambridge. An occasional broad- caster while in England, he has recently returned to Kenya to teach at Kangaru School.

KoMEY, Ellis Ayitey: b. 1927 at Accra. Educated at Accra Academy. Has published poetry in Black Orpheus and West African Review. Now African Editor of Flamingo.

Kunene,Mazisi: b. 1930 in Durban, where he took his M. A. at Natal University. Came to London in 1959 to work on a thesis on Zulu poetry. Now engaged on pohtical work and writing an epic concerning the origin and purpose of life as understood in Zulu tradition. Has written a number of vernacular poems and plays, some of which have been pub- lished in South Africa. Won the Bantu Literary Competition in 1956.

Malangatana, Valente: b. 1936 at Marra9uene in Mozambique. Began drawing as a boy. At this time his mother suddenly went mad, while his father was frequently away at the mines in South Africa. While working as a servant at the Lourengo Marques Club he attended night school and began painting 'furiously'. He was d^covered painting one night by the brilliant architect Amangio Guedes, who took him into his studio. Since then he has worked both as a decorative artist on architectural schemes and as a painter of great force and originality. In addition to a number of poems, he has completed an autobiography. Some of his poetry has appeared in Black Orpheus together with an account of his painting.

Mbiti, John: b. 1931 at Kitui in the Kamba coimtry of Kenya. Educated at Alliance High School, Makerere College, and Barrington College USA, where he was ordained. Is now at Cambridge, working on a thesis. Has published several books in Kikamba, his mother tongue, and has contributed poems and stories to various periodicals in Europe.

181

NOTES ON THE AUTHORS

MoDiSANEj Bloke: b. 1923 at Johannesburg, where he was educated. Worked for some years on Drum magazine but fled from South Africa a few years ago and now lives and works in London as a writer, actor, and broadcaster. Has published short stories and articles in many periodicals and is now working on three books : a collection of South African stories, another of his own stories, and an autobiography. He played a leading role in the London production of Genet's The Blacks.

Neto, Agostinho: b. 1922 at Icola e Bengo in Angola. Studied medicine in Lisbon and returned to practise in Angola. Associated with the movement led by Viriato da Cruz for the 'rediscovery' of Angola's indigenous culture. In i960 Neto was elected President of the Angolan Liberation Movement MPLA. In i960 he was arrested and taken to Portugal for imprisonment. But in 1962 it was annoimced that he had escaped from Portugal with the aid of the demo- cratic resistance movement. Has published poetry in Portu- guese and Angolan reviews and in Andrade's Caderno and anthology.

Okara, Gabriel: b. 1921 in the Ijaw country of the Niger Delta, Nigeria. Educated at Government College, Umuahia, he then became a book-binder. At that time he began to write plays and features for broadcasting. He is now Information Officer with the Eastern Regional Government at Enugu. Several of his poems have appeared in Black Orpheus, starting with the first number in 1957. He has just completed a novel. A self-sufficient, deeply read, and thoughtful poet.

Okigbo, Christopher: b. 1932 at Ojoto near Onitsha in the Ibo country of Eastern Nigeria, The imagery of his poetry is often rooted in the groves, shrines, and sacred streams of his birthplace. Educated at Government College, Umuahia, and University College, Ibadan, where he read Classics. From 1956 to 1958 he was Private Secretary to the Federal Minister of Research and Information, then taught for two years at Fiditi near Ibadan before joining the Library staff at the University of Nigeria. He is now West African representative of the Cambridge University Press. A voracious reader, whose passion for classical poetry seems to be reflected in his own fastidious craftsmanship. He has published Heavensgate,

182

NOTES ON THE AUTHORS

poems (Ibadan, Mbari, 1962), Limits and Other Poems (Mbari, 1962).

Peters, Lenrie: b. 1932 at Bathurst. Educated at Bathurst, Freetown, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took a medical degree in 1959. Now studying surgery at Guildford. He is an amateur singer and broadcaster and has completed a novel which is now under consideration.

Rabearivelo, Jean- Joseph: b. 1901 at Antananarivo, Madagascar, of a noble but poor family. Left school at thirteen and began writing poetry at an early age. His early work is imitative, for he had to teach himself a mastery of French Hterary form before he could develop his own ardent style. He founded a literary review and led the way in the creation of a new Madagascan literature written in French. Passionate and restless in temperament, he married young and drifted from one job to another. He became a drug- addict and killed himself in 1937 in a mood of despair brought on partly by the persistent refusal of the local officials to let him visit France, the ambition of his life. Several of his poems appeared in Senghor's anthology. Has published La Coupe de cendres (1924), Sylves (1927), Volumes (1928), Vientes de la Manana (Rio de Janeiro), Presque-songes (Tananarive, presented by Robert Boudry, chez Henri Vidalie, 1934).

Ranaivo, Flavien: b. 1914 in the Imerina country near Antananarivo, his father being Governor of Arivonimamo. He did not go to school imtil he was eight and learnt music long before he learnt the alphabet. Since early childhood he has spent much time wandering through the countryside aroimd the capital, and his poetic style is much influenced by vernacular song and ballad forms, especially that called *hain-teny\ Hence his crisp use of language, more authentic- ally Madagascan than Rabearivelo's. Several of his poems appeared in Senghor's anthology. Has published L^ Ombre et le vent (Preface by O. Monnoni and Illustrations by Andri- amampianina, Tananarive, 1947) and Mes chansons de toujours (Paris, 1955).

RuBADiRi, David: b. 1930 in Nyasaland. Educated at Makerere College in Uganda and at King's College, Cam- bridge, where he took the English Tripos. During the

183

NOTES ON THE AUTHORS

Nyasaland crisis in 1959 he was arrested but went to Cam- bridge after his release from detention. An active broadcaster while in England, he has recently returned to Nyasaland to teach.

Santo, Aldo do Espirito: b. 1926 in Sao Tome, where he works as a teacher. Has published poetry in several reviews of Sao Tome and Portugal and in Andrade's Caderno and anthology.

Senghor, Leopold Sedar: b. 1906 at Joal, an old Portu- guese coastal settlement in Senegal. He is of the Serere tribe. His father was a groundnut merchant and a Catholic in a land predominantly Moslem. Senghor passed brilliantly from the local lycee and at the age of twenty-two went on to the Lycee Louis le Grand in Paris. Later he completed his agregation at the Sorbonne, the first West African to do so. In Paris he met Cesaire, Damas, and other black poets and intellectuals from the Caribbean area. Prominent as an intellectual and pohtical leader of West Africa for many years, he has been at various times a teacher at the Ecole Nationale de la France d'Outre- mer, a member of the Council of Europe, a Deputy for Senegal in the French National Assembly, and a minister in the French Government. In i960 installed as first President of the Independent Republic of Senegal. Senghor is the principle African advocate of Negritude and the only African poet who has yet produced a substantial body of work. His style emerged fully formed in his first book, which contains some of his best poems. These display already his character- istic music and imagery, an imagery of the night and the moon, of tenderness and protective presences. Has published Chants d^ ombres, poems (Paris, lEditions du Seuil, 1945), Hosties noires, poems (■Editions du Seuil, 1948 : reissued with Chants d* ombre, 1956), Chants pour Naett, poems (Paris, Seghers, 1949), ^thiopiques, poems (Seuil, 1956), Nocturnes, poems (Seuil, 1961), Langage et poesie negro-africaine{ pub- lished in Poesie et langage, Maison du Poete, Brussels, 1954), UApport de la poesie negre (in Temoignages sur la poesie du demi-siecle, Maison du Poete, Brussels, 1953), Esthetique negro-africaine (Diogene, October 1956).

SoYiNKA, Wole: b. 1935 at Abeokuta in the Yoruba country of Western Nigeria. Educated in Ibadan at Government

184

NOTES ON THE AUTHORS

College and University College, then at Leeds University, where he took English Honours. Taught for a while in Lon- don and worked at the Royal Court Theatre, where one of his short plays was produced. In i960 he returned to Nigeria, where his verse play A Dance of the Forests won the Observer Competition and was produced for Nigerian Independence in October 1960. Soyinka is actor, musician, and producer as well as poets and his return to Nigeria has greatly stimulated theatrical hfe there. Has published poetry in Black Orpheus (of which he is an editor). Encounter ^ and elsewhere. He is the first African poet to develop an elegant and good-humoured satirical style, though his recent poetry is darker in tone. Is publishing A Dance of the Forests (forthcoming from Oxford University Press). U Tam'si* Tchicaya: b. 1931 at MpiU in the Middle Congo. In 1946 accompanied his father (then Deputy for Moyen Congo) to France and studied at Orleans and Paris. Hais contributed to various French reviews and written many radio features. His poetry exhibits some influence from Cesaire, but seems to have a distinctively Congolese passion and intensity. Has published Le Mauvais Sang, poems (Paris, Caracteres, 1955), Feu de brousse, poems (Caracteres, 1957), A Triche-Couer, poems (Paris, Oswald. i960), and J^pitome, poems (Oswald, 1962).

185

Index of First Lines

A distant glimmer 135 A naked sun - a yellow sun 63

A scroll of blue, an exquisite thought 64

Africa my Africa 58

All day long, over the long straight rails 50

An echo of childhood stalks before me 90

An image insists 1 10

And the flower weeps 106 At home the sea is in the town 81

Banks of reed 108 Be not amazed beloved, if sometimes my song grows dark 55

Before you, mother Idoto _ 103

Blood falling in drops to the earth 139

Bright with the armpit dazzle of a lioness 104

Clawed green-eyed 70

Come away, my love, from streets 164

Come over here 123 Coming and going these several seasons 91

Contrition twines me like a snake 89

Dead or living 167

DonH love me, my sweet 38

Drop of dew on green bowl fostered 105

Dzogbese Lisa has treated me thus 78

Eyes open on the beach 104

For he was a shrub among the poplars 108

From the west 159

189

INDEX

Grey 3 to the low grass cropping u^

he came to deliver the secret of the sun 124

/ am standing above you and tide 107

/ done try go churchy I done go for court 100 / dream in the intimate semi-darkness of an afternoon 50

/ have my gri-gri 129

/ hear many voices 96

/ love to pass my fingers 85

/ must hide him in my innermost veins 46

/ shall sleep in white calico 80

/ think it rains 116

/ was playing 124 / will pronounce your name Naett^ I will declaim you^

Naettl 54

Ibadan, running splash of rust 89

If we tell) gently i gently 63

In one of the three pots 64

In the cabin ... 168

In the cool waters of the river 172

In the twirling mountains overhung with mist 151

In those days 59

In vain your bangles cast 118

In your presence I rediscovered my name 57

Into your arms I came 171

it gets awfully lonely 154

It is Sunday 43

Left hand is God's hand 102

Listen comrades of the struggling centuries - 56

Lord:, you visited Paris on the day of your birth 46

Masks! Oh Masks! 49 My brother you flash your teeth in response to every

hypocrisy 57

My mother 145

190

INDEX

Negress my warm rumour of Africa 59

New York! At first I was confused by your beauty 51

O beloved farewell. .... 152

Oaf the young man who lives down there 37

On that big estate there is no rain I47

Over the vast summer hills 152

Rust is ripeness i rust ii 7

She whose eyes are prisms of sleep 34

So death 88

So would I to the hills again 106

Suddenly becoming talkative 107

Tell mCi before the ferrymarCs return 88

That multitude of moulded hands 36

The black glassmaker 35

The fire the river thafs to say 123

The hide of the black cow is stretched 33

The hills hunch their backs 130

The moon has ascended between us 103

The mystic drum beat in my inside 95

The past - 76

The present reigned supreme 69

The price seemed reasonable^ location 1 1 1

The snowfiakes sail gently 92 The spring has swept the ice from all my frozen rivers 47

The storks are coming now 97

The Sun hung by a thread 62

The weak scattered rays of yellow sun 163

The wind comes rushing from the sea 98

They are lying out there beside the captured roads 48 This morning at the Luxembourg, this autumn at the

Luxembourg 45

Those stick-insect figures ! they rock the dance 87

Thundering drums and cannons 105

191

INDEX

Traveller i you must set out 112

We have come home 70

We have come to your shrine to worship 75 What dark tempestuous night has been hiding your

face? 51

What invisible rat . 33

What time of night it is 86

When Adam broke the stone 94

When at break of day at a riverside 93

When I still can remember 153

Who has strangled the tired voice 169 Woman^ rest on my brow your balsam hands^ your

hands gentler than fur 44

You held the black face of the warrior between your

hands 54

You leave your faint depressions 113

You who move like a battered old dream 60

Your hand is heavy ^ Nighty upon my brow 118

Your infancy now a wall of memory 77

192

3 1262 04092 4630

Date Due
Due	Returned	Due	Returned

	MC 1 3	1955

- -	-

y. 7r^^^>^msir:mc^[mj^m^mm

This modern poetical geography of Africa is unique. It draws on sixteen countries to present the work of black poets yyriting in English, French, and Portuguese, although all the poems, many of which appear for the first time here, are presented in English. As a sample of contemporary African writing they reveal an interesting blend of public and personal statements

Poetry composed in African languages has been left out, because no two editors could possibly have covered the enormous field. This omission, however, does not impair the clear picture of emotional, social and political pressures (fashionably termed 'Negritude') as they are reflected by Africa's imaginative or committed poets today.

Published by Penguin Boolcs