by Anthony
Nothing more, and this was the place,
the real present, the gift, the light, life,
that is what it was, to suffer cold and hunger,
and not to have shoes and to tremble
in front of the judge, in front of another,
the other being with sword or inkwell,
and in this way struggling, digging and cutting,
sewing, making bread, sowing wheat,
hitting every nail that asked for wood,
entering the earth as if in an intestine
to extract, blindly, the crackling coal
and, still more, going up rivers and mountains,
riding horses, pushing out boats,
cooking tiles, blowing glass, washing clothes,
in such a way that it would seem
all this kingdom had just been created,
dazzling grapes from the vine,
when humanity decided to be happy,
and was not, it was not like that. Little by little I discovered
the law of unhappiness,
the throne of bloodied gold,
complicit freedom,
the unprotected motherland,
the wounded and exhausted heart,
and the sound of the dead without tears,
dry, like stones that fall.
And then I stopped being a child
because I understood that
they did not allow my people to live
and they denied them burial.
(1964)
TRANSLATION BY VALERIA BAKER
Following the 1973 coup which brought General Pinochet to power, the Chilean photographer and poet Carlos Reyes-Manzo (b. 1944) was imprisoned for two years, then exiled to Panama. Kidnapped by the secret police in 1979, to be sent back to Chile, he escaped from the plane and claimed asylum in London, where he has since lived. His work all over the world documenting conflicts and their victims has resulted in four books and numerous exhibitions. In 2011 Amnesty International, to mark its fiftieth anniversary, appointed him its inaugural poet-in-residence.
The Meaning of Africa
ABIOSEH NICOL (1924–94)
JAMES EARL JONES
I was rehearsing Lorraine Hansberry’s last (but unfinished) play Les Blancs for its Broadway premiere – her artistic answer to Jean Genet’s caustic ‘clown show’ about colonialism, called The Blacks (Les Negres) – and was in need of a point of view for Lorraine’s character. He was an African in search of his soul. He had searched in the sophisticated circles of London; now he has returned home to Africa at a chaotic time of liberation. I found Nicol’s poem pertinent not only for my character but for myself. The poem confirmed for me that the goal in all life is not necessarily happiness or success, but simply contentment. Nicol’s liberation is not of the political sort, but more the psychological. I have found that the plea ‘It is only because I have wanted so much / That I have always been found wanting’ applies to most of the characters I have ever tried to bring to life on stage.
The Meaning of Africa
Africa, you were once just a name to me
But now you lie before me with sombre green challenge
To that loud faith for freedom (life more abundant)
Which we once professed shouting
Into the silent listening microphone
Or on an alien platform to a sea
Of white perplexed faces troubled
With secret Imperial guilt; shouting
Of you with a vision euphemistic
As you always appear
To your lonely sons on distant shores.
Then the cold sky and continent would disappear
In a grey mental mist.
And in its stead the hibiscus blooms in shameless scarlet
and the bougainvillea in mauve passion
entwines itself around strong branches
the palm trees stand like tall proud moral women
shaking their plaited locks against the
cool suggestive evening breeze;
the short twilight passes;
the white full moon turns its round gladness
towards the swept open space
between the trees; there will be
dancing tonight; and in my brimming heart
plenty of love and laughter.
Oh, I got tired of the cold northern sun
Of white anxious ghost-like faces
Of crouching over heatless fires
In my lonely bedroom.
The only thing I never tired of
was the persistent kindness
Of you too few unafraid
Of my grave dusky strangeness.
So I came back
Sailing down the Guinea Coast.
Loving the sophistication
Of your brave new cities:
Dakar, Accra, Cotonou,
Lagos, Bathurst and Bissau;
Liberia, Freetown, Libreville,
Freedom is really in the mind.
Go up-country, so they said,
To see the real Africa.
For whomsoever you may be,
That is where you come from.
Go for bush, inside the bush,
You will find your hidden heart,
Your mute ancestral spirit.
So I went, dancing on my way.
Now you lie before me passive
With your unanswering green challenge.
Is this all you are?
This long uneven red road, this occasional succession
Of huddled heaps of four mud walls
And thatched, falling grass roofs
Sometimes ennobled by a thin layer
Of white plaster, and covered with thin
Slanting corrugated zinc.
These patient faces on weather-beaten bodies
Bowing under heavy market loads.
The pedalling cyclist wavers by
On the wrong side of the road,
As if uncertain of his new emancipation.
The squawking chickens, the pregnant she-goats
Lumber awkwardly with fear across the road,
Across the windscreen view of my four-cylinder kit car.
An overloaded lorry speeds madly towards me
Full of produce, passengers, with driver leaning
Out into the swirling dust to pilot his
Swinging obsessed vehicle along,
Beside him on the raised seat his first-class
Passenger, clutching and timid; but he drives on
At so, so many miles per hour, peering out with
Bloodshot eyes, unshaved face and dedicated look;
His motto painted on each side: Sunshine Transport,
We get you there quick, quick. The Lord is my Shepherd.
The red dust settles down on the green leaves.
I know you will not make me want, Lord,
Though I have reddened your green pastures
It is only because I have wanted so much
That I have always been found wanting.
From South and East, and from my West
(The sandy desert holds the North)
We look across a vast continent
And blindly call it ours.
You are not a country, Africa,
You are a concept,
Fashioned in our minds, each to each,
To hide our separate fears,
To dream our separate dreams.
Only those within you who know
Their circumscribed plot,
And till it well with steady plough
Can from that harvest then look up
To the vast blue inside
Of the enamelled bowl of sky
Which covers you and say
‘This is my Africa’ meaning
‘I am content and happy.
I am fulfilled, within,
Without and roundabout
I have gained the little longings
Of my hands, my loins, my
heart
And the soul that follows in my shadow.’
I know now that is what you are, Africa:
Happiness, contentment, and fulfilment,
And a small bird singing on a mango tree.
(1964)
James Earl Jones (b. 1931) made his Broadway debut in 1957 and has since played many Shakespearean and classical parts from the title roles in Othello and King Lear to, more recently, On Golden Pond (2005), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (2008–9), Driving Miss Daisy (2010–11) and Much Ado About Nothing (2013). His 100-plus TV and film credits range from Dr Strangelove (1964) and The Great White Hope (1970) to Claudine (1974), Field of Dreams (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Cry, the Beloved Country (1995) and Gimme Shelter (2013). He is also the voice of Darth Vader in the Star Wars series. His numerous awards include two Tonys, two Emmys and an honorary Academy Award.
Elegy for Alto
CHRISTOPHER OKIGBO (1932-67)
BEN OKRI
The poem I have chosen is by Christopher Okigbo. It is from his only volume of poems, Labyrinths. In it there is a sequence called The Path of Thunder: Poem Prophesying War. And I have chosen ‘Elegy for Alto’ from that sequence. What moves me about the poem is its solemn beauty, its music, its prophetic roll, which leads on to the poet prophesying his own death. It is impossible to separate what moves me in this poem from the inner nature of the way it is written. The poet seems to have gone beyond the rim of ordinary experience, to have wandered to the outer constellations of what it is to be human.
Okigbo is writing about a time of political and cultural disintegration in Nigeria in the sixties. He freights across these omens of war, signs of disaster. He is writing about the onset of the Nigerian civil war, in which he perished. His death, and the slender but distinguished body of poems he left behind, contribute to his legend. His death is implicated in the poem in advance, as it were; one reads it with tears for the death of the poet as well as for the death of his nation’s innocence.
Elegy for Alto
with drum accompaniment
AND THE HORN may now paw the air howling goodbye . . .
For the Eagles are now in sight:
Shadows in the horizon –
THE ROBBERS are here in black sudden steps of showers, of caterpillars –
THE EAGLES have come again,
The eagles rain down on us –
POLITICIANS are back in giant hidden steps of howitzers, of detonators –
THE EAGLES descend on us,
Bayonets and cannons –
THE ROBBERS descend on us to strip us of our laughter, of our thunder –
THE EAGLES have chosen their game,
Taken our concubines –
POLITICIANS are here in this iron dance of mortars, of generators –
THE EAGLES are suddenly there,
New stars of iron dawn;
So let the horn paw the air howling goodbye . . .
O mother, mother Earth, unbind me; let this be
my last testament; let this be
The ram’s hidden wish to the sword, the sword’s
secret prayer to the scabbard –
THE ROBBERS are back in black hidden steps of detonators –
FOR BEYOND the blare of sirened afternoons, beyond the motorcades;
Beyond the voices and days, the echoing highways; beyond the latescence
Of our dissonant airs; through our curtained eyeballs,
through our shuttered sleep,
Onto our forgotten selves, onto our broken images;
beyond the barricades
Commandments and edicts, beyond the iron tables,
beyond the elephant’s
Legendary patience, beyond his inviolable bronze
bust; beyond our crumbling towers –
BEYOND the iron path careering along the same beaten track –
THE GLIMPSE of a dream lies smouldering in a cave,
together with the mortally wounded birds.
Earth, unbind me; let me be the prodigal; let this be
the ram’s ultimate prayer to the tether . . .
AN OLD STAR departs, leaves us here on the shore
Gazing heavenward for a new star approaching;
The new star appears, foreshadows its going
Before a going and coming that goes on forever . . .
(1965–1967)
The Nigerian-born, UK-resident writer Ben Okri (b. 1959) won the 1991 Booker Prize for his third novel The Famished Road, the first volume of an African trilogy continued in Songs of Enchantment (1993) and Infinite Riches (1998). He has written five more novels, most recently Starbook (2007), and has also published poetry, essays and short stories, including Tales of Freedom (2009), A Time for New Dreams (2011) and a volume of poems, Wild (2012).
Requiem for the Croppies
SEAMUS HEANEY (1939–2013)
TERRY GEORGE
The images evoked of the great Irish rebellion of 1798 are poignant and moving. The population – tramp, priest, and peasant – rose up in its thousands against tyrannical British rule. They fought with pikes and farm tools against cannon. The men carried barley seed in their pockets as food on the march, and the following summer, after their inevitable defeat, the barley sprouted from their mass graves. A devastatingly sad image.
Requiem for the Croppies
The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley . . .
No kitchens on the run, no striking camp . . .
We moved quick and sudden in our own country.
The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.
A people hardly marching . . . on the hike . . .
We found new tactics happening each day:
We’d cut through reins and rider with the pike
And stampede cattle into infantry,
Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.
Until . . . on Vinegar Hill . . . the final conclave.
Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.
The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.
They buried us without shroud or coffin
And in August . . . the barley grew up out of our grave.
(1966)
The Belfast-born screenwriter and director Terry George (b. 1952) is the author of various screenplays, notably In the Name of the Father (1993). In 1996 George made his directorial debut with Some Mother’s Son. Since then he has written and directed numerous television shows and feature films including A Bright Shining Lie (1998), The District (2000–4), Hart’s War (2002) and Reservation Road (2007). In 2004 he wrote, directed and produced Hotel Rwanda, and his latest feature film is Whole Lotta Sole (2011). In 2012 George and his daughter, Oorlagh, won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film for their Northern Ireland reconciliation story The Shore.
Gone Ladies
CHRISTOPHER LOGUE (1926–2011)
BRIAN PATTEN
Christopher Logue wrote ‘Gone Ladies’ in 1966 and dedicated it to the artist Pauline Boty, who died that year at the age of twenty-eight. In 1978 her husband, Clive Goodwin, died of a brain haemorrhage in a Los Angeles lockup where he’d been thrown by the police. They thought he was drunk. Boty Goodwin, their daughter, as heart-stoppingly beautiful as her mother, died seventeen years after that, at the age of twenty-nine.
‘Gone Ladies’ is an adaptation of Villon’s ‘Ballade des dames du temps jadis’, written in the twelfth century. It is an elegy for real and mythical women, their beauty, and how it vanishes, like – as Dante Gabriel Rossetti says in an earlier translation – ’the snows of yesteryear’. It also evokes a far broader sadness, the sadness one feels for all gone friends.
Gone Ladies
Where in the world is Helen gone,
Whose loveliness demolished Troy?
Where is Salome?
Where the wan licentious cream of Avalon?
Who sees my lady Fontenoy
And where is Joan, so soldier tall?
And she who
bore God’s only boy?
Where is the snow we watched last Fall?
Is Thaïs still? Is Nell? And can
Stem Héloïse aurene,
Whose so-by-love-enchanted man
Sooner would risk castration than
Abandon her, be seen?
Who does Scheherazade enthral?
And who, within her arms and small,
Shares Sappho’s evergreen?
Through what eventless territory
Are ladies Day and Joplin swept?
What news of Marilyn who crept
Into an endless reverie?
You saw Lucrece? And Jane? And she,
Salvations’s ancient blame-it-all,
Delicious Eve? Then answer me:
Where is the snow we watched last Fall?
Girl never see to know from me
Who was the fairest of them all.
What wouldst thou say if I asked thee:
Where is the snow we watched last Fall?
(1966)
Brian Patten (b. 1946) made his name in the 1960s as one of the Liverpool Poets, alongside Adrian Henri and Roger McGough with their joint anthology, The Mersey Sound (1967), which is now a Penguin Modern Classic. He has published more than forty books, including Collected Love Poems and Selected Poems (2007). He writes for both children and adults and his poems are translated into many European languages.
Dream Song 90: Op. posth. no. 13
JOHN BERRYMAN (1914–72)
AL ALVAREZ
John Berryman wrote this poem about his friend Randall Jarrell.
As it happens, Jarrell was not one of the young writers who gathered around Richard Blackmur, though like most of them – Berryman, Delmore Schwartz, Robert Lowell, Theodore Roethke – he died badly and too soon. But, whenever I read Berryman’s lines about ‘the beloved faces’, I think of Blackmur and Princeton, of being young and ambitious and full of ideas and of arguing all night with Kenneth Burke. And sometimes the poem makes me wish that I, too, believed in an afterlife – if only because I know that if I ran into Burke up there we’d go on with the argument, and all would be as before.