— December 1981



Cacophony

Like dark dried dates
your breasts hang, withered,
sucked sapless by strangers.

And even in your old-age,
they come again:
Trinket-bearers from the West
with tinsel to dazzle the uninitiated.

From the east they return
to show you a star:
You! who gave birth
to your own constellation.

They come to talk, to small-talk,
but your ears choke on
their precious irrelevants.

So rise, clear your un-used throat –
Speak, Africa, and make this
bird-like chatter cease.

— September 1975



Hymn for the Spring Equinox

For the National Conference of Artists, founded on 29 March 1959 by such African-American luminaries as Margaret Burroughs and Charles White. The NCA convenes close to its anniversary each year, which coincides with the Spring Equinox.

To the ends of the earth
they have marched us,
to this worship at
their altar of ashes,
to this exile from
ancestral voices.
But we outmaneuvering
these drill sergeants of
decay and despair.

From a muted trumpet
sinewed spirits rise,
North Star dust in shades
of limegreens and purples
as dew for these parched eyes.

Calling Parks, calling Biggers,
AfriCOBRA, Twins Seven-Seven.
Hi-steppers, giant striders,
fancy foot-workers these.
Remold us in our image,
glaze us with courage enough
to survive this searing kiln.

Like Sahelian rock painters,
we leave soul etchings
in these desert dwellings.
Accent on the lips,
on the kink, on the
. . . steatopygia, if you please!

From Olmec to Easter Island,
Meroe to Manhattan,
our handprints echo across
canyons of emptied memories.

In the footsteps of
Zimbabwean stonecutters and
Nubian pyramid builders,
defying gravity and
easy explanations.

In the footsteps of
Creole cake-walkers,
Rio revelers, Juvay jumpers.

Turning old oil drums
to sweet steel sounds/
Turning sugarcane cutters
to road-march kings/
Turning washerwomen
to glittering Birds of Paradise/
Turning us all from this alien duality.

No more conquests by soul of body.
No more conquests of soul by body.
No more conquests.
No more blood-drinking rituals.
No more sack cloths and ashes.
No more.

We owing this sweet-and-sour life,
this fusion of flesh and spirit,
Kuumba, indestructible and indivisible.

Claiming we ting,
breaking this lock-step
march of lemmings.
Dancing in the footsteps
of the First Ancestor,
banishing our winters of desolation
with your solar sketches of spring.

— 28 March 1983



Guardian of the Hearth

Husband and lone son ceded to sod,
Winds pluck her limbs away,
petal by petal.

Grey and ghostly shadows
fill hallowed hours,
her only companion now –
a fire.

From pines and peaches,
red-clay wound to
this ashy season.

Beshawled and bewigged,
She rises to praise the gods that damned her
to this end without end.
Amen.

— 23 December 1983