sombre, acerbic,
to be sipped like medicine,
exhilarating.
Africa existed only
in my big sister’s books.
Two volumes of fauna:
wildebeests, impalas,
klipspringers, hornbills, bee-eaters.
Impossible creatures.
How could they be so gorgeous
tensed and mortal?
I stowed them away
in my mind’s attic
unconvinced. That continent
would have to wait
for me to undo myself.
Till I could become little
again, and start walking
onto a different sounding earth.
So I grew very small that morning
outside the farm at Kersefontein
when I first saw a goliath heron
drying its wings in dawn.
Above all because
of the sheer size of the sky.
There it was, just about everywhere,
pressing down the earth’s edges
dictating the curvature of horizon.
Then the quiet relief
of going inside to breakfast
of bacon and eggs
and imagining being in Yorkshire again
one rare sunny day.
Ko Un at Kersefontein, Western Cape, May 2013
A glass too many of wine tonight.
Then it all comes back:
that evening the poets gathered
on the plain outside Kersefontein
visiting a bleak abandoned schoolhouse
from which, all round the compass,
not a sign of life.
The kids, black farmhands’ kids,
maybe some Afrikaners,
got up early, walking or biking
or horsing it over the horizon
to get an alphabet in this
two-room schoolhouse
in the exact, calculated
centre of nowhere.
Till fifty years ago.
Then something in fuel or law
or education shifted
leaving the school floundering.
Now, all the poets can see
is horizon, horizon, more horizon,
and a shimmering sky.
Someone has thoughtfully
put a crate of red wine
on the tractor that shunted
them out here. Glasses (real)
appear, as they try
properly to enquire about
the history of this stranded
monster. Soon they lose the thread
of duty, begin to enjoy
the simplicity of being there
briefly at no cost.
Suddenly, fifty yards
further west, Ko Un,
erupting delight
from every tense sinew
roars what sounds
like a Zen command
in Korean, his arms
bruising the air,
willing the poets
to rush to his side.
The orange sun is about
to drop over its chosen
horizon. So what does he do?
He stretches up on tiptoe
doubles his height
and with a great booming noise
flings his right arm
up into the sky
and shoves the sun down
over the brink.
And all the poets roar too
excited, unembarrassed.
They had never sent the sun
to bed like this before.
Now in the softer haze
they drain the rest of the good wine
wondering if they will ever
put the sun to sleep
so well again.
When he first glimpsed
the schoolhouse
Ko Un had shouted
eyes dancing
‘my temple, my temple!’
Corrugated roof,
crumbling cement walls
a couple of withered trees
not much shade.
Seamus Heaney in Italy
He sat on a very high dais, the public poet,
smiling down on us,
mildly embarrassed
by his prominence there.
Then he quietly read
a few hundred of those lines
that had long been part of my life
– almost apologetically,
as if they were no more his
to own up to.
Which is what I suppose poems are:
perfect perfectible objects
(he tinkers still with some I thought
were final jewels) that bounce
erratically from mind to mind
the way a rugby ball
holds a game together.
So that when he stopped
once in a while, to gloss
a word here or there,
it was as if he’d come
into my lamplit room at night
and picked off the shelves
pieces of bric-à-brac
gathered over the years,
weighing them in the pit of his hand,
giving them back their own shape,
giving them some of the time they needed.
Opening Up
My friend Stefano – not a tall fellow,
and given to mildness – dropped in for a drink
the other night. We’d just read a couple
of poems by Jack Gilbert when he reached
inside his shirt, took out
his heart and stood it on the table.
We were both a little embarrassed.
It was a neat, clean heart,
like a crystal-walled travelling clock
ticking quietly, without an echo.
He turned it slightly to one side
so that I could see where the music
came in and then around to where
something like the shadow
of a horse was receding
into the distance between the table
and the window. I took another
sip of wine, wondering what
I should ask. Rather sheepishly,
he patted the heart, and said,
‘What are we supposed to do
with these strange machines
that keep telling us we’re alive?’
‘Have you tried giving it to your wife?’
I asked, stuck for an answer.
A little stiffly, he reached
out, picked it up delicately
between finger and thumb
and replaced it inside his shirt,
which he buttoned carefully
as if he had all the time in the world.
We have never mentioned this since.
Autumn in the Casentino
A palette of auburn yellow orange ochre
ginger russet setter-red shook and smudged
this morning on our hills. You snapped it
for later. We stopped the pick-up to save
it for later. Why always for later, knowing
it’s here now? See one leaf of one
tree. Impossible. See one tree of one
wood, one grove of one hillside. Impossible.
Everything runs away into more, and we
love it. Such happy eyes, roly-polying
across acres. Such sad minds trying to
gather moss. We start the pick-up,
stop the snaps. The road holds us together
down the hill, bumps us together on
the front seats, shoulder knocking shoulder.
We’ll talk about the colours later, each
naming one, seeing another, not one leaf
or tree of which we can be sure we saw.
The Pieces
The pieces you pick up
from the day
are pieces of body. You
/> go on hoping they will be
of hope. Then images
come flying at you.
Torn arms. Children flinching
at explosions. Hospital
corridors unable to cope.
Unswabbed blood. You cannot
back away from these
into home or poetry.
KO UN
KO UN is the author of more than a hundred volumes of poetry, fiction, essays and children’s literature. After witnessing the devastation of the Korean War, he entered a monastery and became a Buddhist monk. In the ’70s and early ’80s, he was imprisoned repeatedly for his opposition to the military regime. Ko Un has twice won the South Korean Literature Prize and received the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry’s Lifetime Recognition Award.
RICHARD SILBERG, associate editor of Poetry Flash, is author of five books of poetry and the book of essays Reading the Sphere.
CLARE YOU, chair of the Center for Korean Studies at the University of California Berkeley, has received the Korean National Silver Medal of Culture.
Prelude
Oh, the eternal gales
sweeping through the valleys of Changkun Summit and Mangch’unhu,
Oh, the gusty winds no one can tame,
these are the sons and sons of sons of Korea
Look at the sixteen crests of the magnificent Lake Ch’unji.
I tear my life into sixteen pieces
to fly them on the crests.
Fighting this ache of shame,
the day of freedom will come.
Sadness
A thinker who’s not sad anymore.
No more sadness?
No more sadness?
Who would have thought I’d end up a pauper.
Majung Village
Over the steep, panting hills where
I rest my heart.
I like the simple homeliness
of the bitch and her puppies.
For how many centuries have
such homely sights been dear to us?
The stern old nettle tree standing by the village gate
gathers sweeping winds.
That’s not all.
Beyond the village
the well never dries.
What a wonder it is,
the well’s not a dipperful lower.
Children throw stones.
On the other side of the hills
pheasants flutter away, frightened for no reason.
The snow’s not gone yet.
An old man, arms akimbo, runs into an eddy of wind.
BIRAGO DIOP
Translated from the French by JOCELYN SPAAR
BIRAGO DIOP was a poet and storyteller from Dakar. Born into an influential Wolof family, he recorded the oral histories, riddles, folktales, songs and aphorisms of his people. He published a number of these stories, including Les contes d’Amadou Koumba (1947), Les nouveaux contes d’Amadou Koumba (1958) and Contes et Lavanes (1963), which was awarded the Grand prix littéraire in 1964.
Le Souffle des ancêtres
Ecoute plus souvent
Les choses que les êtres,
La voix du feu s’entend,
Entends la voix de l’eau.
Ecoute dans le vent
Le buisson en sanglot :
C’est le souffle des ancêtres.
Ceux qui sont morts ne sont jamais partis
Ils sont dans l’ombre qui s’éclaire
Et dans l’ombre qui s’épaissit,
Les morts ne sont pas sous la terre
Ils sont dans l’arbre qui frémit,
Ils sont dans le bois qui gémit,
Ils sont dans l’eau qui coule,
Ils sont dans la case, ils sont dans la foule
Les morts ne sont pas morts.
Ecoute plus souvent
Les choses que les êtres,
La voix du feu s’entend,
Entends la voix de l’eau.
Ecoute dans le vent
Le buisson en sanglot :
C’est le souffle des ancêtres.
Le souffle des ancêtres morts
Qui ne sont pas partis,
Qui ne sont pas sous terre,
Qui ne sont pas morts.
Ceux qui sont morts ne sont jamais partis,
Ils sont dans le sein de la femme,
Ils sont dans l’enfant qui vagit,
Et dans le tison qui s’enflamme.
Les morts ne sont pas sous la terre,
Ils sont dans le feu qui s’éteint,
Ils sont dans le rocher qui geint,
Ils sont dans les herbes qui pleurent,
Ils sont dans la forêt, ils sont dans la demeure,
Les morts ne sont pas morts.
The Breath of the Ancestors
Listen more often
To things than beings
The voice of fire is heard,
Hear the voice of water.
Listen in the wind
to the sobbing bush:
It is the breath of the ancestors
Those who died have never left
They are in the glowing shadows
And in the deepening shadows,
The dead are not in the ground
They are in the trembling tree,
They are in the moaning woods,
They are in the flowing water,
They are in the still water
They are in the hut, they are in the crowd
The dead are not dead.
Listen more often
To things than beings
The voice of fire is heard,
Hear the voice of water.
Listen in the wind
to the sobbing bush:
It is the breath of the ancestors
The breath of the dead ancestors
Who have never left
Who are not in the ground,
Who are not dead.
Those who died have never left,
They are in the woman’s breast,
They are in the wailing child,
And in the ember that ignites.
The dead are not in the ground,
They are in the fire fizzling out
They are in the groaning rock,
They are in the weeping grasses,
They are in the forest, they are in the dwelling.
The dead are not dead.
Ecoute plus souvent
Les choses que les êtres,
La voix du feu s’entend,
Entends la voix de l’eau.
Ecoute dans le vent
Le buisson en sanglot:
C’est le souffle des ancêtres.
Il redit chaque jour le pacte,
Le grand pacte qui lie,
Qui lie à la loi notre sort;
Aux actes des souffles plus forts
Le sort de nos morts qui ne sont pas morts;
Le lourd pacte qui nous lie à la vie,
La lourde loi qui nous lie aux actes
Des souffles qui se meurent.
Dans le lit et sur les rives du fleuve,
Des souffles qui se meuvent
Dans le rocher qui geint et dans l’herbe qui pleure.
Des souffles qui demeurent
Dans l’ombre qui s’éclaire ou s’épaissit,
Dans l’arbe qui frémit, dans le bois qui gémit,
Et dans l’eau qui coule et dans l’eau qui dort,
Des souffles plus forts, qui ont prise
Le souffle des morts qui ne sont pas morts,
Des morts qui ne sont pas partis,
Des morts qui ne sont plus sous terre.
Ecoute plus souvent
Les choses que les êtres …
Listen more often
To things than beings
The voice of fire is heard,
Hear the voice of water.
Listen in the wind
to the sobbing bush:
It is the breath of the ancestors
It recounts each day
the pact,
The great pact that binds,
That binds our fate to the law;
To the acts of stronger breaths
The fate of our dead who are not dead
The weighty pact that binds us to life,
The weighty law that binds us to acts
Breaths that pass away.
In bed and on the river bank,
Breaths that move
In the groaning rock and the weeping grass
Breaths that remain
In the glowing and deepening shadows,
In the tree that trembles, in the woods that moan,
And in the flowing water and in the still water,
Stronger breaths, which have taken
The breath of the dead who are not dead,
The dead who have never left,
The dead who are not in the ground.
Listen more often
To things than beings …
Prière d’un petit enfant nègre
Seigneur je suis très fatigué.
Je suis né fatigué.
Et j’ai beaucoup marché depuis le chant du coq
Et le morne est bien haut qui mène à leur école.
Seigneur, je ne veux plus aller à leur école,
Faites, je vous en prie, que je n’y aille plus.
Je veux suivre mon père dans les ravines fraîches
Quand la nuit flotte encore dans le mystère des bois
Où glissent les esprits que l’aube vient chasser.
Je veux dormir ma sieste au pied des lourds manguiers,
Je veux me réveiller
Lorsque là-bas mugit la sirène des Blancs
Et que l’Usine
Sur l’océan des cannes
Comme un bateau ancré vomit dans la campagne
son équipage nègre …
Seigneur, je ne veux plus aller à leur école,
Faites, je vous en prie, que je n’y aille plus.
Ils racontent qu’il faut qu’un petit nègre y aille
Pour qu’il devienne pareil
Aux messieurs de la ville