The Woman and the Flame

Aimé Césaire

A bit of light that descends the springhead of a gaze

twin shadow of the eyelash and the rainbow on a face

and round about

who goes there angelically

ambling

Woman the current weather

the current weather matters little to me

my life is always ahead of a hurricane

you are the morning that swoops down on the lamp a night stone

between its teeth

you are the passage of seabirds as well

you who are the wind through the salty ipomeas of consciousness

insinuating yourself from another world

Woman

you are a dragon whose lovely color is dispersed and darkens so

as to constitute the

inevitable tenor of things

I am used to brush fires

I am used to ashen bush rats and the bronze ibis of the flame

Woman binder of the foresail gorgeous ghost

helmet of algae of eucalyptus

dawn isn't it

and in the abandon of the ribbands

very savory swimmer
 ONCE UPON A TIME
BY GABRIEL OKARA

Once upon a time, son,

they used to laugh with their hearts
and laugh with their eyes:
but now they only laugh with their teeth.
While their ice-block-cold eyes search behind my shadow.

There was a time indeed

They used to shake hands with their hearts:
but that’s gone, son.
Now they shake hands without hearts
while their left hands search
my empty pockets.

‘Feel at home!” “Come again’:

they say, and when I come
again and feel
at home, once, twice,
there will be no thrice
for then I find doors shut on me.

So I have learned many things, son.

I have Learned to wear many faces
like dresses – homeface.
Office face, streetface, hostface.
Cocktail face, with all their conforming smiles
like a fixed portrait smile.

And I have learned too

To laugh with only my teeth
and shake hands without my heart.
I have also Learned to say, ‘Goodbye”.
When I mean “Good-riddance’
: to say ‘Glad to meet you’,
Without being glad; and to say ‘It’s been
Nice talking to you’, after being bored.

But believe me, son.

I want to be what I used to be
When I was like you. I want

To unlearn all these muting things.

Most of all, I want to releam
how to laugh, for my laugh in the mirror
shows only my teeth like a snake’s bare fangs!

So show me, son,

How to laugh; show me how
I used to laugh and smile
once upon a time when I was like you.
 Hunger
by Jayanta Mahapatra

It was hard to believe the flesh was heavy on my back.

The fisherman said: Will you have her, carelessly,
trailing his nets and his nerves, as though his words
sanctified the purpose with which he faced himself.
I saw his white bone thrash his eyes.

I followed him across the sprawling sands,

my mind thumping in the flesh’s sling.
Hope lay perhaps in burning the house I lived in.
Silence gripped my sleeves; his body clawed at the froth
his old nets had only dragged up from the seas.

In the flickering dark his hut opened like a wound.

The wind was I, and the days and nights before.
Palm fronds scratched my skin. Inside the shack
an oil lamp splayed the hours bunched to those walls.
Over and over the sticky soot crossed the space of my mind.

I heard him say. My daughter, she’s just turned fifteen….

Feel her. I’ll be back soon, your bus leaves at nine.
The sky fell on me, and a father’s exhausted wile.
Long and lean, her years were cold as rubber.
She opened her wormy legs wide. I felt the hunger there,
the other one, the fish slithering, turning inside.