Via Poefrika

This poem has a special meaning for me as I grew up in Nigeria being called “half-caste” and always despised the word and refused to acknowledge the term. Even today I meet Nigerians who continue to use the term either as a way of describing themselves or others leaving me cringing. The poem makes a mockery of the term “half”,

“half head half ear, half foot…….”half-caste” “coloured” “mixed race” “quarter-caste” “yellow” “high yellow” “low yellow” “red” “mulatto”, “quadroon” - how about just plain simple “Black”!

Excuse me
standing on one leg
I’m half-caste

Explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean when picasso
mix red an green
is a half-caste canvas/
explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean when light an shadow
mix in de sky
is a half-caste weather/
well in dat case
england weather
nearly always half-caste
in fact some o dem cloud
half-caste till dem overcast
so spiteful dem dont want de sun pass
ah rass/
explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean tchaikovsky
sit down at dah piano
an mix a black key
wid a white key
is a half-caste symphony/

Explain yuself
wha yu mean
Ah listening to yu wid de keen
half of mih ear
Ah lookin at yu wid de keen
half of mih eye
and when I’m introduced to yu
I’m sure you’ll
understand
why I offer yu half-a-hand
an when I sleep at night
I close half-a-eye
consequently when I dream
I dream half-a-dream
an when moon begin to glow
I half-caste human being
cast half-a-shadow
but yu must come back tomorrow
wid de whole of yu eye
an de whole of yu ear
an de whole of yu mind

an I will tell yu
de other half
of my story
© John Agard

Listen to John Agard read the poem

Tags:

John Agard
Caribbean + Poetry
half-caste

So many years, so much faith, Hu,
and the sun shining through its lens
to etch truth into the books.

I hold a mirror to my face, looking at
my life from the world’s arched back.

Steel rods fill the mandala of my dreams,
bars that won’t let me leap over the Great Wall
to the place of gods on Mount Gephel,

where monks fire the streets of the town
I was born in, as I, Jamyang, wait for

somebody to bring a blanket
to this floor, some writing pads,
a pencil, so I can take poems home with me

when one day on the midnight train
bound for Lhasa I set foot again.
© Rethabile Masilo

Jamyang Kyi is a Tibetan singer, song-writer, journalist, who on the 1st of April was jailed by Chinese authorities. Protest poems is asking poets to write something against the action taken by China’s leaders, something for the release of Jamyang. Please visit protestpoems.org for more information. And if you haven’t already done so, bookmark them and visit regularly to see what unfairly treated journalist or artist the community is supporting.

Technorati: jamyang kyi lesotho poetry protest poems
Del.icio.us: jamyang kyi lesotho poetry protest poems
Furl: jamyang kyi lesotho poetry protest poems

Mazisi Raymond Kunene was born in Durban, South Africa, in 1930 [12th of May]. He graduated from the University of Natal with a paper on traditional and modern Zulu poetry. In 1959 he obtained a grant to complete his doctoral dissertation in London.

From this point on Kunene dedicated himself to the struggle for freedom of African countries. He worked for institutions such as the Afro-Asian Writers Committee and founded the South African Vocational Programme for refugees in Tanzania and Zambia.

In 1966 he was officially banned from his home country along with 45 other authors. He was one of the founding members of the Anti-Apartheid Movement and became Chief Representative for the African National Congress in Europe and USA in 1962.

Kunene received support from notables such as Picasso, Chagall, Giacometti, Moore and Rauschenberg when he established the South African Exhibition Appeal in 1972.
[more…]

Was I wrong

Was I wrong when I thought
All shall be avenged?
Was I wrong when I thought
The rope of iron holding the neck of young bulls
Shall be avenged?
Was I wrong
When I thought the orphans of sulphur
Shall rise from the ocean?
Was I depraved when I thought there need not be love,
There need not be forgiveness, there need not be progress,
There need not be goodness on the earth,
There need not be towns of skeletons,
Sending messages of elephants to the moon?
Was I wrong to laugh asphyxiated ecstasy
When the sea rose like quicklime
When the ashes on ashes were blown by the wind
When the infant sword was left alone on the hill top?
Was I wrong to erect monuments of blood?
Was I wrong to avenge the pillage of Caesar?
Was I wrong? Was I wrong?
Was I wrong to ignite the earth
And dance above the stars
Watching Europe burn with its civilisation of fire,
Watching America disintegrate with its gods of steel,
Watching the persecutors of mankind turn into dust
Was I wrong? Was I wrong?
© Mazisi Kunene
[source…]

Technorati: mazisi kunene south-african poetry
Del.icio.us: mazisi kunene south-african poetry
Furl: mazisi kunene south-african poetry

When time works against us
and weighs at the heart
somewhere in a foreign land,
night turns to day, and
the fashion in shop windows
I pass on my way from work
into djellabas, the smell
of restaurants into kuskus
on a market day,
hands all out, stretched
to acknowledge this gift,
walking in the shadow
of African women, men,
with their fear of anchored boats
on coastal fronts. History
in the present. On
a young night that is day
I go inland where spear battles musket,
and I join in the fight on the river
that filled with blood, our phagocyte
impi sieging their laager in anger.
On the metro of the morning,
Le Monde in my hands and
work on my mind, there’s always
a part of Africa that yearns
for me, for my presence, my flesh,
beyond the chatter of the train
needling underneath the capital
into the reconciliation of our lifetime,
before the evening of my days.
© Rethabile Masilo

Related links:
– Encounter South Africa
– Andries Pretorius
– Dingaan kaSenzangakhona

Prophecy

There,
where adventure keeps a clean eye
there where women shimmer with language
there where death is beautiful in the hand like a milk season bird
there where on bended knee the underground gathers a wealth of sloes more violent than caterpillars
there where for nimble wonder anything goes

there where vigorous night bleeds the speed of true vegetables

there where bees of stars sting a hive’s sky brighter than night
there where my heel sound fills space and counts down the removal of the face of time
there where my word’s rainbow must bring together tomorrow and hope, infante and queen.

for having insulted my masters bitten the sultan’s soldiers
for having moaned in the wilderness
for having called out to my guards
for having appealed to jackals and hyenas shepherds of caravans

I watch
the wild horse of smoke hurry on the stage hem for an instant the lava of its fragile
peacock’s tail, then tearing off its shirt suddenly split its chest and I watch it as
the British Isles as islets as broken rocks melting bit by bit into the lucid sea of the air
where bathe ominously
my face
my revolt
my name.

by Aimé Césaire

translated by Rethabile Masilo (with apologies to Mr Césaire)

Aimé Césaire was born on 26 June 1913 in Basse-Pointe and died on 17 April 2008 in Fort-de-France. May he rest in peace. While studying in Paris he came into contact with African students, among which were Léopold Sédar Senghor. They struck a friendship and exchanged ideas and experiences, founding the Negritude movement in the process.

They first set up the magazine L’étudiant Noir (The black Student), in whose pages the term négritude first appeared. The essence of negritude was the rejection of assimilation by colonialism and other racial systems, and the expression of one’s own being. It was mostly cultural and less political. When Aimé Césaire declared that je suis de la race de ceux qu’on opprime (I am of the race of the oppressed), there was little colour in the meaning, but much harmony with oppressed people, full-stop. He fought that battle and others till today, the 17th of April, 2008. Mr. Césaire has left for us volumes of poems, plays, essays and other genres:

Poésie
* Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, Paris, Présence africaine, (1939; 1960)
* Les Armes miraculeuses (1946; Paris, Gallimard, 1970)
* Soleil cou coupé (1947; Paris, Editions K., 1948)
* Corps perdu (gravures de Picasso), Paris, Editions Fragrance, (1950)
* Ferrements, Paris, Seuil, (1960; 1991)
* Cadastre, Paris, Seuil, (1961)
* Moi, laminaire, Paris, Seuil, (1982)
* La Poésie, Paris, Seuil, (1994)

Théâtre
* Et les chiens se taisaient, Paris, Présence Africaine, 1958; 1997
* La Tragédie du roi Christophe, Paris, Présence Africaine, (1963; 1993)
* Une saison au Congo, Paris, Seuil, (1966, 2001)
* Une tempête, d’après La Tempête de William Shakespeare : adaptation pour un théâtre nègre), Paris, Seuil, (1969; 1997)

Essais
* Esclavage et colonisation, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1948. Réédition : Victor Schoelcher et l’abolition de l’esclavage, Lectoure, Editions Le Capucin, 2004.
* Discours sur le colonialisme, Paris, éditions Réclames, 1950 ; éditions Présence africaine, 1955.
* Discours sur la négritude, (1987).

Histoire
* Toussaint Louverture, La révolution Française et le problème colonial, Paris, Présence Africaine, (1962.

Entretiens
* Rencontre avec un nègre fondamental, Entretiens avec Patrice Louis, Paris, Arléa, 2004.
* Nègre je suis, nègre je resterai, Entretiens avec Françoise Vergès, Paris, Albin Michel, 2005.

Enregistrement audio
* Aimé Césaire, Paris, Hatier, “Les Voix de l’écriture”, 1994.
[source…]

NOTE: Please read another of our post on Mr. Césaire

Technorati: aimé césaire negritude
Del.icio.us: aimé césaire negritude
Furl: aimé césaire negritude