Keorapetse Kgositsile
Keorapetse Kgositsile Poems
An omelette cannot be unscrambled. Not even the one prepared in the crucible of 19th century sordid European design.
When Europe cut up this continent into little pockets of its imperialist want and greed it was not for aesthetic reasons, nor was it in the service of any African interest, intent, or purpose.
...
Is where the vowels dream
in a name among consonants
chasing the crevices of sound
in a ritual longer than the distance
...
Let me sense the chaos
I will respond
with a song
why else
...
I plunge into language
hoping to emerge with the shout
or whisper of the quiet and secret places
my sister celebrates
...
We are breath of drop of rain
Grain of sea sand in the wind
We are root of baobab
Flesh of this soil
Blood of Congo brush elegant
As breast of dark cloud
Or milk flowing through the groaning years
We also know
Centuries with the taste
Of white shit down to the spine
The choice is ours
So is the life
The music of our laughter reborn
Tyityimba or boogaloo passion
Of the sun-eyed gods of our blood
Laughs in the nighttime, in the daytime too
And across America vicious cities
Clatter to the ground. Was it not
All written by the gods!
Turn the things! I said
Let them things roll
To the rhythm of our movement
Don't you know this is a love supreme!
John Coltrane John Coltrane tell the ancestors
We listened we heard your message
Tell them you gave us tracks to move
Trane and now we know
The choice is ours
So is the mind and the matches too
The choice is ours
So is the beginning
'We were not made eternally to weep'
The choice is ours
So is the need and the want too
The choice is ours
So is the vision of the day
...
Blessed are the dehumanized
for they have nothing to lose
but their patience
False gods killed the poet in me. Now
I dig graves
with artistic precision
...
deep in your cheeks
your specific laughter owns
all things south of the ghosts
we once were. straight ahead
the memory beckons from the future
you and I a tribe of colours
this song that dance
godlike rhythms to birth
footsteps of memory
the very soul aspires to. Songs
of origins songs of constant beginnings
what is this thing called
love
...
Beware, my son, words
that carry the loudnesses
of blind desire also carry
the slime of illusion
dripping like pus from the slave's battered back
e.g. they speak of black power whose eyes
will not threaten the quick whitening of their own intent
what days will you inherit?
what shadows inhabit your silences?
I have aspired to expression, all these years,
elegant past the most eloquent word. But here now
our tongue dries into maggots as we continue our slimy
death and grin. Except today it is fashionable to scream
of pride and beauty as though it were not known that
'slaves and dead people have no beauty'
Confusion
in me and around me
confusion. This pain was
not from the past. This pain was
not because we had failed
to understand:
this land is mine
confusion and borrowed fears
it was. We stood like shrubs
shrivelled on this piece of earth
the ground parched and cracked
through the cracks my cry:
And what shapes
in assent and ascent
must people the eye of newborn
determined desire know
no frightened tear ever rolls on
to the elegance of fire. I have
fallen with all the names I am
but the newborn eye, old as
childbirth, must touch the day
that, speaking my language, will
say, today we move, we move ?
...
We now know past any argument
that places can have scars
and they can be warm
or cold or full of intrigue
...
If destroying all the maps known
would erase all the boundaries
from the face of this earth
...
The festive heart knows that
it is always possible to do more
of what you must do
and to do it better, always
...
When I swim in my music
a harmattan of colours
becomes an area of feeling
where a rainbow of feathers
...
A while back I said
with my little hand upon
the tapestry of memory and my loin
leaning on the blues to find voice:
...
Keorapetse Kgositsile Biography
Keorapetse Kgositsile was born on September 19, 1938 in Johannesburg, South Africa. In 1961 Kgositsile was one of the first young members of the African National Congress (ANC) who were instructed to leave the country by the leadership of the national liberation movement. After a year in Tanzania, where he worked on the Spearhead Magazine as Frene Jinwalla’s editorial assistant, Kgositsile got a scholarship to study Literature and Creative Writing in the United States. Since his first post at Sarah Lawrence College in New York in 1969, he taught Literature and Creative Writing at a number of universities in the United States and on the African continent, including the University of Denver, Wayne State University, New School for Social Research, University of California at Los Angeles and the universities of Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Fort Hare.)
The Best Poem Of Keorapetse Kgositsile
NO SERENITY HERE
An omelette cannot be unscrambled. Not even the one prepared in the crucible of 19th century sordid European design.
When Europe cut up this continent into little pockets of its imperialist want and greed it was not for aesthetic reasons, nor was it in the service of any African interest, intent, or purpose.
When, then, did the brutality of imperialist appetite and aggression evolve into something of such ominous value to us that we torture, mutilate, butcher in ways hideous beyond the imagination, rape women, men, even children and infants for having woken up on what we now claim, with perverse possessiveness and territorial chauvinism, to be our side of the boundary that until only yesterday arrogantly defined where a piece of one European property ended and another began?
In my language there is no word for citizen, which is an ingredient of that 19th century omelette. That word came to us as part of the package that contained the bible and the rifle. But moagi, resident, is there and it has nothing to do with any border or boundary you may or may not have crossed before waking up on the piece of earth where you currently live.
Poem, I know you are reluctant to sing
when there is no joy in your heart
but I have wondered all these years
why you did not or could not give
answer when Langston Hughes who
wondered as he wandered asked
what happens to a dream deferred
I wonder now
why we are some
where we did not aim
to be. Like my sister
who could report from any
where people live
I fear the end of peace
and I wonder if
that is perhaps why
our memories of struggle
refuse to be erased
our memories of struggle
refuse to die
we are not strangers
to the end of peace
we have known women widowed
without any corpses of husbands
because the road to the mines
like the road to any war
is long and littered with casualties
even those who still walk and talk
when Nathalie, whose young eyes know things, says
there is nothing left after wars, only other wars
wake up whether you are witness or executioner
the victim, whose humanity you can never erase,
knows with clarity more solid than granite
that no matter which side you are on
any day or night an injury to one
remains an injury to all
somewhere on this continent
the voice of the ancients warns
that those who shit on the road
will meet flies on their way back
so perhaps you should shudder under the weight
of nightmares when you consider what
thoughts might enter the hearts of our neighbours
what frightened or frightening memories might jump up
when they hear a South African accent
even the sun, embarrassed, withdraws her warmth
from this atrocious defiance and unbridled denial
of the ties that should bind us here and always
and the night will not own any of this stench
of betrayal which has desecrated our national anthem
so do not tell me of NEPAD or AU
do not tell me of SADC
and please do not try to say shit about
ubuntu or any other such neurosis of history
again I say, while I still have voice,
remember, always
remember that you are what you do,
past any saying of it
our memories of struggle
refuse to be erased
our memories of struggle
refuse to die
my mothers, fathers of my father and me
how shall I sing to celebrate life
when every space in my heart is surrounded by corpses?
whose thousand thundering voices shall I borrow to shout
once more: Daar is kak in die land!
Keorapetse Kgositsile Comments
Keorapetse Kgositsile Popularity
Keorapetse Kgositsile Popularity
Delivering Poems Around The World
Poems are the property of their respective owners. All information has been reproduced here for educational and informational purposes to benefit site visitors, and is provided at no charge...
5/1/2024 6:39:37 PM # 1.0.0.1119
Vibrate as much as you can, Maktub