You Laughed And laughed And

Laughed - Gabriel Okara
In your ears my song
is motor car misfiring
stopping with a choking cough;
and you laughed and laughed and laughed.

In your eyes my ante-

natal walk was inhuman, passing
your ‘omnivorous understanding’
and you laughed and laughed and laughed

You laughed at my song,

you laughed at my walk.

Then I danced my magic dance

to the rhythm of talking drums pleading, but you shut your eyes
and laughed and laughed and laughed

And then I opened my mystic

inside wide like the sky,
instead you entered your
car and laughed and laughed and laughed

You laughed at my dance,

you laughed at my inside.
You laughed and laughed and laughed.

But your laughter was ice-block

laughter and it froze your inside froze
your voice froze your ears
froze your eyes and froze your tongue.

And now it’s my turn to laugh;

but my laughter is not
ice-block laughter. For I
know not cars, know not ice-blocks.

My laughter is the fire

of the eye of the sky, the fire
of the earth, the fire of the air,
the fie of the seas and the
rivers fishes animals trees
and it thawed your inside,
thawed your voice, thawed your
ears, thawed your eyes and
thawed your tongue.

So a meek wonder held

your shadow and you whispered;
‘Why so?’
And I answered:
‘Because my fathers and I
are owned by the living
warmth of the earth
through our naked feet.’

The Mystic Drum

 
 

The mystic drum 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 ground
and invoked the eye of the sky
the sun and the moon and the river gods -
and the trees bean to dance,
the fishes turned men
and men turned fishes
and things stopped to grow -
 
 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 ground 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.
A common hate enriched our love
for us

A common hate enriched our love for us:

Escape to parasitic ease disgusts;

discreet expensive hushes stifled us
the plangent wines became acidulous

Rich foods knotted to revolting clots

of guilt and anger in our queasy guts
remembering the hungry comfortless.

In draughty angles of the concrete stairs

or seared by salt winds under brittle stars
we found a poignant end to tenderness,

and, sharper than our strain, the passion

against our land's disfigurement and tension;
hate gouged out deeper levels for our passion -

a common hate enriched our love for us

 
A Far Cry from Africa
Derek Walcott - 1930-2017

A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt

Of Africa. Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:
"Waste no compassion on these separate dead!"
Statistics justify and scholars seize
The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
To savages, expendable as Jews?

Threshed out by beaters, the long rushes break

In a white dust of ibises whose cries
Have wheeled since civilization's dawn
From the parched river or beast-teeming plain.
The violence of beast on beast is read
As natural law, but upright man
Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.
Delirious as these worried beasts, his wars
Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum,
While he calls courage still that native dread
Of the white peace contracted by the dead.

Again brutish necessity wipes its hands

Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again
A waste of our compassion, as with Spain,
The gorilla wrestles with the superman.
I who am poisoned with the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?
Dedication by Wole Soyinka
for Moremi, 1963
Earth will not share the rafter's envy; dung floors
Break, not the gecko's slight skin, but its fall
Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for life

As this yam, wholly earthed, yet a living tuber

To the warmth of waters, earthed as springs
As roots of baobab, as the hearth.

The air will not deny you. Like a top

Spin you on the navel of the storm, for the hoe
That roots the forests plows a path for squirrels.

Be ageless as dark peat, but only that rain's

Fingers, not the feet of men, may wash you over.
Long wear the sun's shadow; run naked to the night.

Peppers green and red—child—your tongue arch

To scorpion tail, spit straight return to danger's threats
Yet coo with the brown pigeon, tendril dew between your lips.

Shield you like the flesh of palms, skyward held

Cuspids in thorn nesting, insealed as the heart of kernel—
A woman's flesh is oil—child, palm oil on your tongue

Is suppleness to life, and wine of this gourd

From self-same timeless run of runnels as refill
Your podlings, child, weaned from yours we embrace

Earth's honeyed milk, wine of the only rib.

Now roll your tongue in honey till your cheeks are
Swarming honeycombs—your world needs sweetening, child.

Camwood round the heart, chalk for flight

Of blemish—see? it dawns!—antimony beneath
Armpits like a goddess, and leave this taste

Long on your lips, of salt, that you may seek

None from tears. This, rain-water, is the gift
Of gods—drink of its purity, bear fruits in season.

Fruits then to your lips: haste to repay

The debt of birth. Yield man-tides like the sea
And ebbing, leave a meaning of the fossilled sands.