Your presence by David Diop

Your presence

In your presence I have rediscovered my name
My name that was hidden so long under the pain of separation
I have rediscovered the eyes no longer veiled with fever
And your laugther like a flame piercing the shadows
Has revealed Africa to me beyond the snows of yesterday
Ten years my love
With days of illusion and abandoned ideas
And sleep restless with alcohol
Ten years of suffering poured on me from the world' s breath
Suffering that burdens today with the taste of tommorow
And turns love into a boundless river
In your presence I have rediscovered the memory of my blood
And the necklaces of laugther hung round our days
Days sparkling with ever new joys .

David Diop

David Mandessi Diop was born on July 9, 1927 in Bordeaux, France to a Senegalese father and a Cameroonian mother. Back to Senegal, Diop started writing at a very tender age and he was one of the most promising French West African poets known forhis contribution to the Négritude literary movement. His work reflects his hatred of colonial rulers and his hope for an independent Africa. He died in a plane crash, at the age of 33, in 1960.

Africa by David Diop

Africa

Africa my Africa
Africa of proud warriors in ancestral savannahs
Africa of whom my grandmother sings
On the banks of the distant river
I have never known you
But your blood flows in my veins
Your beautiful black blood that irrigates the fields
The blood of your sweat
The sweat of your work
The work of your slavery
Africa, tell me Africa
Is this your back that is unbent
This back that never breaks under the weight of
humilation
This back trembling with red scars
And saying no to the whip under the midday sun
But a grave voice answers me
Impetuous child that tree , young and strong
That tree over there
Splendidly alone amidst white and faded flowers
That is your Africa springing up anew
springing up patiently , obstinately
Whose fruit bit by bit acquires
The bitter taste of liberty.

David Diop

French (Original language of the poem)

Afrique mon Afrique
Afrique des fiers guerriers dans les savanes
ancestrales
Afrique que me chantait ma grand - mère
Au bord de son fleuve lointain
Je ne t’ai jamais connue
Mais mon regard est plein de ton sang
Ton beau sang noir à travers les champs répandu
Le sang de ta sueur
La sueur de ton travail
Le travail de l’ esclavage
L’esclavage de tes enfants
Afrique dis - moi Afrique
Est- ce donc toi ce dos qui se courbe
Et se couche sous le poids de l’humilité
Ce dos tremblant à zébrures rouges
Qui dit oui au fouet sur les routes de midi
Alors gravement une voix me répondit
Fils impétueux cet arbre robuste et jeune
Cet arbre là - bas
Splendidement seul au milieu de fleurs blanches
et fanées
C’est l ’Afrique ton Afrique qui repousse
Qui repousse patiemment obstinément
Et dont les fruits ont peu à peu
L’amère saveur de la liberté.

David Diop

David Mandessi Diop was born on July 9, 1927 in Bordeaux, France to a Senegalese father and a Cameroonian mother. Back to Senegal, Diop started writing at a very tender age and he was one of the most promising French West African poets known forhis contribution to the Négritude literary movement. His work reflects his hatred of colonial rulers and his hope for an independent Africa. He died in a plane crash, at the age of 33, in 1960.

Dear SAMAFORM by Mankind Olawale Oyewumi

Dear SAMAFORM

Out of His mercy
Who formed me
I formed thee to
Have the world reformed
By the power of providence
I proffered the path
That thy destiny takes
Tomorrow
Forever
For the cute confederation
Of a world wildly willed for love
My precious samaformism
Which my mortal finitude
Nurses conforms not with
The selfhood of acts
That survive on evil
In relentless topple
Of demonic destroyables
That glory in the universe
Of terror and trauma
Thy goal is to gaol
The achievements
Of the devil's chiefs
And while you for
Justice cater from
Limited parentage
And serial merits
The juice in the blood
Of the slaughtered fauxpas
Shall not in conspiracy
Camp thy conscience
Or in ambitious despiracy
Weaken thy strength

SAMAFORM
Thou shall deliver the
Race of man from the
Flowing flood of destructive
Dystopia which incapacitates
Their words and decapitates
Their ways
With it their parental
Ledger is of ethical
Motherhood retrenched
Moral is the soul of hereafter
Justice the engine of its journey
Thy duty still is making decency
The belonging of the world
And fairness the jewel of its end
You hold the key to free
Their feelings
Liberate their thoughts
And reform their practices
From the patronage of prejudices
Which way-lay their fulfillment
And welcome their miseries
Based on the infinite truth
That our species is one
Bribery is below thy honor
Derailment unworthy
Of thy avocation
Whether featured or fanned
Out by the directory of the world
Thy task is to
Make the world
Its only hope thou
Clearly constitute
Do not fail

Oh SAMAFORM {!}
God always thy power
Samaforism forever they propeller
Our Directorates provide the how
When the world's woes
Humiliate the huge scale
Of the devils manifestoes
Samaformism shall sail
On the virulent waters
Of smooth reforms
And the major meaning
Of creation shall maim
The twin misanthropies
Of squandered ages
Oh SAMAFORM {!}
This thy proper
Place points!?

Mankind Olawale Oyewumi

Mankind Olawale Oyewumi is a philosopher, teacher (of language and literature) and writer of substance from Africa.He attended the University of Lagos,Nigeria.He has two fantastic books to his intellectual credibility--SONGS OF THE LAW,a poetry anthology and IMMORTAL INSTRUCTIONS,a compendium of his deep thoughts on life's different spheres. He is the father of SAMAFORMISM a philosophical movement called SAMAFORM ( Sacrosanct Mankind Forward Movement) and the founder of Humanity Day. 

Building the Nation by Henry Balow

Building the Nation

Today I did my share
In building the nation.
I drove a Permanent Secretary
To an important urgent function
In fact to a lunch at the Vic.

The menu reflected its importance
Cold bell beer with small talk,
Then fried chicken with niceties
Wine to fill the hollowness of the laughs
Ice-cream to cover the stereotype jokes
Coffee to keep the PS awake on return journey.

I drove the Permanent Secretary back.
He yawned many times in back of the car
Then to keep awake, he suddenly asked,
Did you have any lunch friend?
I replied looking straight ahead
And secretly smiling at his belated concern
That I had not, but was slimming!

Upon which he said with seriousness
That amused more than annoyed me,
Mwanainchi, I too had none!
I attended to matters of state.
Highly delicate diplomatic duties you know,
And friend, it goes against my grain,
Causes me stomach ulcers and wind.
Ah, he continued, yawning again,
The pains we suffer in building the nation!

So the PS had ulcers too!
My ulcers I think are equally painful
Only they are caused by hunger,
Not sumptuous lunches!

So two nation builders
Arrived home this evening
With terrible stomach pains
The result of building the nation –
– Different ways.

Henry Balow

Henry Muwanga Balow was born on 1st May, 1929. He was a renowned and celebrated Ugandan poet and one of the recipients of the Uganda Golden Jubilee medals in 2013. He died on 20th August, 2006.

In The Small Hours by Wole Soyinka

In The Small Hours

Blue diaphane, tobacco smoke
Serpentine on wet film and wood glaze,
Mutes chrome, wreathes velvet drapes,
Dims the cave of mirrors. Ghost fingers
Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins
Of marooned mariners, captives
Of Circe's sultry notes. The barman
Dispenses igneous potions ?
Somnabulist, the band plays on.

Cocktail mixer, silvery fish
Dances for limpet clients.
Applause is steeped in lassitude,
Tangled in webs of lovers' whispers
And artful eyelash of the androgynous.
The hovering notes caress the night
Mellowed deep indigo? still they play.

Departures linger. Absences do not
Deplete the tavern. They hang over the haze
As exhalations from receded shores. Soon,
Night repossesses the silence, but till dawn
The notes hold sway, smoky
Epiphanies, possessive of the hours.

This music's plaint forgives, redeems
The deafness of the world. Night turns
Homewards, sheathed in notes of solace pleats
The broken silence of the heart.

Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka is one the most honoured African poets. He is a playwright, poet, lecturer and an activist. He was awarded the Nobel prize in Literature in 1986 being the African to be so honoured. Wole Soyinka was born on 13 July, 1934.