OTHER METHODS Poem by Pierre Alféri

When
Sunday
Gets you down
Do the Hausa
The Aka
The Jivaro.


When the iron shutters
Fall and people
Get that floury look
Like fillets of whiting, Sunday
Gets you down you say
You'll never do anything

Then
Do the Hausa that mimics the horn-bill
Stuck in the bulrushes two three leaves
On the head for the tail
Raised arm bent hand
Fingers folded into a beak the cry
Completes the mouth
Pursed-lipped

Do
The Aka baby pygmy
Lulled at the entrance to the hut
Early in the morning very early
By the yodel his mother still young
And beautiful hums low
Very low because she's still half-asleep
Hopes you'll leave her another hour
And by her cousin still young and beautiful
Also with beautiful breasts in
Counterpoint redoubtable
Counterpoint you open an eye
Ouhou ouhou ouhou
You turn over in the odour
Of last night's fire

Do
The Jivaro that grates
Its creeper packaging the turnings
Spits makes the red liquid
Run cooks it dips
Its arrow in the jam
Takes off in a sigh no
One saw it no one saw
The bird fall and you
You are like it in the forest
State Sunday
Gone gone
With your prey your feathered phrase.

Translation: 2012, Kate Campbell