David Mandessi Diop – Vultures

In that time
When civilization struck with insults
When holy water struck domesticated brows
The vultures built in the shadow of their claws
The bloody monument of the tutelary era
In that time
Laughter gasped its last in the metallic hell of roads
And the monotonous rhythm of Paternosters
Covered the groans on plantations run for profit
O sour memory of extorted kisses
Promises mutilated by machine-gun blasts
Strange men who were not men
You knew all the books you did not know love
Or the hands that fertilize the womb of the earth
The roots of our hands deep as revolt
Despite your hymns of pride among boneyards
Villages laid waste and Africa dismembered
Hope lived in us like a citadel
And from the mines of Swaziland to the heavy sweat of  Europe’s factories
Spring will put on flesh under our steps of light.

Birago Diop – Spirits

Listen to Things

More often than Beings,

Hear the voice of fire,

Hear the voice of water.

Listen in the wind,

To the sighs of the bush;

This is the ancestors breathing.

Those who are dead are not ever gone;

They are in the darkness that grows lighter

And in the darkness that grows darker.

The dead are not down in the earth;

They are in the trembling of the trees

In the groaning of the woods,

In the water that runs,

In the water that sleeps,

They are in the hut, they are in the crowd:

The dead are not dead.

Listen to things

More often than beings,

Hear the voice of fire,

Hear the voice of water.

Listen in the wind,

To the bush that is sighing:

This is the breathing of ancestors,

Who have not gone away

Who are not under earth

Who are not really dead.

Those who are dead are not ever gone;

They are in a woman’s breast,

In the wailing of a child,

And the burning of a log,

In the moaning rock,

In the weeping grasses,

In the forest and the home.

The dead are not dead.

Listen more often

To Things than to Beings,

Hear the voice of fire,

Hear the voice of water.

Listen in the wind to

The bush that is sobbing:

This is the ancestors breathing.

Each day they renew ancient bonds,

Ancient bonds that hold fast

Binding our lot to their law,

To the will of the spirits stronger than we

To the spell of our dead who are not really dead,

Whose covenant binds us to life,

Whose authority binds to their will,

The will of the spirits that stir

In the bed of the river, on the banks of the river,

The breathing of spirits

Who moan in the rocks and weep in the grasses.

Spirits inhabit

The darkness that lightens, the darkness that darkens,

The quivering tree, the murmuring wood,

The water that runs and the water that sleeps:

Spirits much stronger than we,

The breathing of the dead who are not really dead,

Of the dead who are not really gone,

Of the dead now no more in the earth.

Listen to Things

More often than Beings,

Hear the voice of fire,

Hear the voice of water.

Listen in the wind,

To the bush that is sobbing:

This is the ancestors, breathing

Léopold Sédar Senghor – Elegy Of Midnight

 

Summer, splendid Summer, nourishing the Poet on the milk of your light
I who grew up like the wheat of spring, which made me drunk
From green water, from the green steaming in the gold of Time
Ah! no longer can I tolerate the midnight light.
The splendor of such honors resembles a Sahara,
An immense void, with neither erg nor rocky plateau,
With no grass, no twinkling eye, no beating heart.
Twenty-four hours a day like this, and my eyes are wide open
Like Father Cloarec’s, crucified on a boulder by the Joal pagans
Who worshipped snakes. In my eyes the Portuguese lighthouse
Turns round and round, twenty-four hours a day,
A precise and restless mechanism, until the end of time.

I jumped out of bed, a leopard about to be snared,
A sudden gust of Simoom filling my throat with sand.
Ah! if I could just collapse in the dung and blood, in the void.
I turn around among my books watchilng me with their deep eyes
Six thousand lamps burning twenty-four hours a day.
I stand up lucid, strangely lucid. And I am handsome,
Like the one-hundred-runner, like the rutting black stallion
From Mauritania. I carry in my blood a river of seeds
That can fertilize all the plains of Byzantium
And the hills, the austere hills.
I am the Lover and the locomotive with a well-oiled piston.

Her sweet strawberry lips, her thick stone body,
Her secret softness ripe for the catch, her body
A deep field open to the black sower.
The Spirit germinates under the groin, in the matrix of desire
The sex is one antenna mong many where flashing messages are exchanged.
Love music no longer can cool me down, nor the holy rhythm of poetry.
Against this despair, Lord, I need all my strength
—A soft dagger in the heart as deep as remorse.
I am not sure of dying. If that was Hell: the lack of sleep
This desert of the Poet, this pain of living, this dying
From not being able to die, the agony of shadows, this passion
For death and light like moths on hurricane lamps at night,
In the horrible rotting of virgin forests.

Lord of light and shadows,
You, Lord of the Cosmos, let me rest in Joal-of-the-Shades,
Let me be born again in the Childhood Kingdom full of dreams,
Let me be the shepherd of my shepherdess on the Dyilôr tanns
Where dead men flower, let me burst out applauding
When Téning-Ndyaré and Tyagoum-Ndyaré enter the circle
And let me dance like the Athlete to the drum of this year’s Dead.
This is only a prayer. You known my peasant’s patience.
Peace will come, the Angel of dawn will come, the singing of birds
Never heard before will come, the light of dawn will come.
I will sleep at dawn, my pink doll in my arms,
My green- and gold-eyed doll with a voice so marvelous,
It is the very tongue of poetry.

—Translated from the French by Melvin Dixon

(from Nocturnes, 1961)

fictive beat

W/O/M/A/N
gone into abstraction
gitane smoke before the rain,
cello case velvet interior
soft and firm

W/O/M/A/N
breasts and silk once seen on canvas
could not concede to his kisses
or arch of bow
he had to wander

W/O/M/A/N
no more companion
than those strings he manipulated
with fingers callused,
she will not tremor

W/O/M/A/N
as absent as the background
waiting for a taxi,
rain effective conduit
to her misery,
he sheltered the cello
with umbrella
heading to a jazz club

W/O/M/A/N
is the beat
is the tender thrum,
a cello’s true heart
and poets calling,
absinthe and kisses
parted stocking thighs
he had found another
W/O/M/A/N

Musician in the Rain by Robert Doisneau

 

 

steps to a mocking truth

my shoes have grown
as my heart and eyes have seen
they walked with me,
since those first inaccurate stumbles
seeing surface and texture
slipped on,
tied,
buckled
leather formed about the feet,
or thrown in disgust
at a politicians head,
they walk with us
mutely seeing and interacting
as the  animal they once where
to a human misery,
without shoes connecting to earth
and nature of earthen creation,
ski hardening
to dust
stone
and blacktop,
miles witnessed
to a freedom attained
toes as extremity population
encounter first and enjoy
what was once an overall entrapment
thorns may spike
stones may pierce
batons beat
and electrodes burn,
washed and anointed
our shoes are needed
protect
shelter
enable
and keep away the awful pains,
shoes see more
than we think

dversepoets.com

 

camomile artist

this voice of the river
pressed wavelets to the hull,
kisses gentle
as the heat of day waned,
there is an island
he took himself to
and revealed not to many,
his sister stretched her hand
to the surface,
his obsession that yellow obsession
of scrawled canvas
becoming painfully light
each coming and passing day,
his work confessional
to a degree that
his lips where bitten into scabs
and fingernails worn,
absinthe stained his teeth
and confounded the workings
of an already fractured mind,
he wanted to show
one person the accommodation
crooked walls hung with works
salons would faint at,
not his usual pastorals and portraits,
this was a diminished reality
with a lot of truth
his sarcasm would not yield
afraid of her reaction
progressed slowly
yesterday still had a grip,
he could not release
approaching jetty
tremors worked in his arms,
breathing quickened,
when the moon set
he would be revealed
and her pain would be no loss,
when the rains came
he would return alone
clouds would cover the moon
and deny reflection and illumination
there was a lot more to be done

John Singer Sargent – Autumn on The River 1889

sewing in blood

if rambo sewed curtains
instead of his arm
what strength would he
place in the cotton,
resilience to tugs and pressure
from a climbing cat
or a child wishing
to see snow from a
winters window,
it need not be war
it need not be pain,
sometimes curtains close
out the things we wish
not to see,
but does rambo need
to sew them every time

Rambo

war in polystyrene

cockroach in the jazz room
sat on singers shoe
fed on golden olives
from bough hooked low,
ladybirds in 40D brassieres
cut back on the needles
stuck in their eye,
seven spots
notational dots as a code
to the twelve gauge hunter
who stalked them so,
cockroach had breathed
a stallions breath
and knew of a great stratagem,
lead hunter as prey
clarinet bullets penetrate his loins
with a chakka chakka chakka,
40D brassieres strung over light
wings spread
translucent shimmer of paradise,
cockroach touches
with hissing leg,
hunters body spread as sacrifice,
thrum of the drums
there are other monsters/ dragons/pain
drapery gone
meat on the anvil
clogged with anxiety and lust
chakka chakka chakkka,
cockroach fragments
a bed of panties and brassieres
become his resting place

the wicked binds tightly

a house wreathed with cobwebs

and love letters turned to mud

behind unwashed curtains

and one last ticking clock,

creaking thunder and a rising breeze,

chance sat on the shoulders of the couple

who hand in hand

washed in rain,

where rings of secret words whispered,

blinked as if stardust clung to eyelids

afternoon fragrance of apples

from nearby orchard

ripe waiting to be picked

and placed in basket,

within those walls he saw them

bite flesh letting juice

run over lips as they embrace,

but they would share with a nest

of memories and swept away brutality,

no stars would shine inside,

and it would be clever to reside

with those ghosts without  rest

Wordle 129

 

 

songs of the heart

suns pity shines

on the damaged boat,

listless resting on rocky beach

cracked paint and clouded windows,

once and a while ago

it moved on inlet

under sail and motor

bright painted with bright young things

sipping drinks,

swim shorts and bikinis

cast off bottles

peeled labels no messages

sink if not carried by current

settling with pale crabs

moving over bottom

withe sideward indifference

creations blood flowed,

and they aged,

a parked sedan

jacketed against the cold

a mans hand touched bow

feeling that old electricity,

seeing the vibrancy

that once had been

a life of splendor