Today, Easter Sunday morning a sudden snowstorm swept over the island. Between the greening hedges lay snow. My young son drew me to a little apricot tree by the house wall away from a verse in which I pointed the finger at those who were preparing a war which could well wipe out the continent, this island, my people, my family and myself. In silence we put a sack over the freezing tree.
I find this poem very appropriate to the times we are living in. Unfortunately.
I’ve read about falling leaves in fifty thousand poems novels and so on watched leaves falling in fifty thousand movies seen leaves fall fifty thousand times fall drift and rot felt their dead shush shush fifty thousand times underfoot in my hands on my fingertips but I’m still touched by falling leaves especially those falling on boulevards especially chestnut leaves and if kids are around if its sunny and I’ve got news for friendship especially if my heart doesn’t ache and I believe my love loves me especially if it’s a day I feel good about people I’m touched by falling leaves especially those falling on boulevards especially chestnut leaves.
6th September, 1961, Leipzig
Nazim Hikmet from Poems of Nazim Hikmet, translation Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk, Persea Books, 2002
You can describe parts of me, but who I am – and what I need –
is something I have to find out myself.
Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebe was an eminent Nigerian poet, critic, professor and novelist. He shot to fame with his first novel titled, ‘Things Fall Apart’, which is still widely read and is the most sought after book in modern African literature. In 2007, he won the ‘Man Booker International Prize’.
We identify it as if it were a wooden horse different from all horses. We adorn its forehead with a ribbon, we hang on its neck colourful rattles, and at midnight we get ready to receive it as if it were an explorer descending from a star.
The way bread resembles yesterday’s bread, a ring all rings: the days blink clearly, jingling, fleetingly, and lie down in the dark night.
I see the last day of this year on a train, toward the rains of a distant purple archipelago, and the man on the machine, complicated like a clock from heaven, lowering his eyes to the infinite ruler of the rails, to the shining handles, to the nimble bonds of fire.
Of conductor of trains accelerating toward the black stations of the night, this end of the year, without wife or children, is it not the same for the one gone, the one coming? From the roads and workshops, the first day, the first dawn of the starting year, has the same rusty colour as the iron train: and people along the way greet it, cows, villages, the vapour of the first light of day, without knowing it is the year’s door, a day heralded by bells, adorned with plumes and carnations.
The earth does not know it: it will receive that golden day, gray, heavenly, it will extend it over hills, it will wet it with arrows of translucent rain, and then it will curl it in a tube, will store it in the shadows. It is thus, but a small door of hope, new year’s day, although you are like the bread of all breads, we will live you in a different way, we will eat you, flower you, wait for you. We will place you like a cake in our lives, we will light you like candelabra, we will drink you as if you were a topaz. New Year’s Day, electric day, fresh, all the leaves emerge green from the trunk of time.
Crown us with water, with open jasmine, with all the aromas deployed, yes, even though you’re only a day, a poor human day, your halo beats over so many tired hearts, and you are, oh new day, oh forthcoming cloud, bread unseen before, permanent tower!
Crisbie Coach 