Pina Piccolo
AREITO FOR WINNIE TILIN
For the voice of Queen Anacaona, Haiti's ancestral mother
Winnie Tilin, 16 month old Heroic Haitian Child Proclaimed so by your uncle Franz Lone survivor Of your line Pearl of Hispaniola Daughter of the daughters of Queen Anacaona Serenely surveying us With the regal glance Of those who stand beyond good and evil. Black rosebud blooming from the twisted entrails of the earth For you ancestral mothers have created A coffer of precious air Just like the one that hid the jewels Stolen by the old time buccaneers Of Bertrand D'Orgeon, the one whose Tobacco plantations Were in need of strong, black hands. And now you observe us quietly and do not scream While the white hands of an all-male Australian television troupe Act as midwife And all the saints Of Toussaint L'Overture The Black Jacobin Bow to you. Rejoice in their presence While the burials linger on And slowly nocturnal chants rise among the evacuees Descendants of black rebel slaves Who bivouac with the souls of the Taino Chasing away with their Creole freedom songs Broadcasted once upon a time on agronomist Jean Dominique's radio The demons of the West breathing out Of airport runways As in olden days they used to from caravels Docked at Mole Saint Nicole From which many centuries later The wretched of the earth took sail In make-do vessels Just to be thrown back to the sharks by "maritime interdictions" a.k.a. in other countries with the imaginative term "push-backs". Sharks, tiburones, they too with strange names Like Papa Doc and Baby Doc while a priest Who beat the drum of justice Elected by public acclaim Was declared insane By the nearby hegemonic power And forced He, the President of what had been 180 years before The first black republic To seek asylum in the last Nation to free itself of apartheid. Spit on that black water The Blackwater That now in the airport Is put in plastic bottles To be handed out as it was in Basra As it was handed out to all the saints of New Orleans Who were taking shelter upon rooftops with their music It's being handed out by the same old wolves Dressed in sheep's clothing Neither winning a Nobel Peace Prize Nor donning a charity cloak Can make their soul fresh and clean While people are dying of thirst Waiting for the right security conditions While pillagers are laughing in their glass palaces And journalists are crying out "Looter!" If a starving wretch Dares grab a piece of bread Sticking out of the ruins of a supermarket. May the brightness of the white rompers You were lovingly wrapped in by ta maman Three days before she merged her spirit With those of her ancestors Shine the light of Revelation on the half disclosed plots Of those who with ferocious mildness Ply their heinous trade Of Rubble Banker.
"Un published poem, written in honor of the 16 month girl, Winnie Tilin, found alive under the rubble 63 hours after the earthquake struck Haiti in 2010. "
For Mahmoud Darwish, whispering his soul over Gaza
You were taken by a merciful death, Mahmoud Lest phosphorous devour your heart A chorus of stones answered As the Strip lay awash in wrath And a swallow looked and wept As the bricks came unwrapped And the song of ages drowned The knocks of unmanned flight As a tribe of pigeons cooed a baby alone sleeping through the night And the ghosts of the olive groves Bereft of poet Sang the Buraq back to life. January 2009 (published online in the Palestine Chronicle) ZENZILE MIRIAM MAKEBA AND THE CASTELVOLTURNO BOYS What makes your eyes shine, Miriam Makeba, This last night On the stage of your passing? Great Merciful Goddess You restrained yourself from summoning Your thread cutting Fates To walk her through The great portal: Not the death Of a puppet You decreed fitting For her But that of A woman of integrity Who sang of freedom In every corner of the world. Freezing night, up there whipped by the wind A semi-deserted square Out in the sticks Somewhere in the South On a wheel chair Arthritis roaring in your bones Discouragement laying siege to your heart After sixty years giving battle You can't take it no more People asking you for That silly Pata Pata Yet your eyes shine Like those of a baby. Zenzile Miriam Makeba In your lap between your hands Visible only to the eyes of the righteous The gift of the Great Mother The prism That breaks down the fine boundary Between what we are allowed to see And what is hidden from us. No tutus for the dying song Of the black swan For this final Saraband An empress dress Beads and gold courtesy of Ob Ob Exotic Fashions Sartoria di CastelVolturno Orbiting around you, Miriam Zenzele Makeba Six boys Who went nameless For days Branded In infamy by the press. Ooooon myyy riiight Resplendent with his tambourine in hand ALEX GEEMES Yell out their names Because the word Creates worlds And encapsulates Essence The Casalesi bullets Sure missed This core Oooon myyyy leeeeft Shining At his pirate drum ALAJ ABEBA Breaks loose To cover up the crackling Of Kalashnikovs Aaat the keyyyyyboards My own very grandchild The most excellent NELSON LUMUMBA LEE No need for introductions Two names - one programme Iiiin froooont of yooou Frenetic in the dance The nimblest, most harmonious (actually one of them a bit awkward An African without rhythm) KWANE YULIUS FRANCIS, SAMUEL KWAKU and CHRISTOPHER ADAMS Secret ambassadors Of Ghana, Togo and Liberia For you the children of Africa Have organized the first rebellion Of blacks On Italian soil For you now The band is playing. And fiiiinally ERIC AFFUM YEBAOD With his glorious saxophone You've come a long way, since waiting in your car All bashful For them to bring you your Patched up trousers Now perform your talent In the eyes of the world. The new, very latest, very last band Of Lady Miriam "Sings the blues" Makeba Mama Afrika The Empress of African Song Wrapped like a Goddess In precious cloth Courtesy of Ob Ob Exotic Fashions World renowned designers of CastelVolturno She came back To reclaim her children Missing in the Diaspora Wave upon wave For the past sixty thousand years. Sing, goddess, Not the rage of Achilles the son of Peleus, The destructive rage that sent countless ills on the Achaeans... But the beauty of sound Polyphonic and stuttering Syllables that soar Circle and fall Like crows Whose wings are shattered By hurricanes to come.
For Azania Speaks Conference, November 17, 2008
(published online in the journal Kuma)
"I don't know if this needs explanation for the American public. Miriam Makeba died on stage in a small town outside of Caserta (near Naples) where she had gone for a benefit concert for an educational project, just miles away from the town where about a month before 7 immigrant African workers had been killed by the Cammora (the local Mafia). I imagined her introducing them one by one as her band, during her final concert))
"
A Mother's Day Triptych (2012)
I. The mother of invention
As she sat there unfulfilled Under that fig tree gratuitously cursed For its barrenness The mother stared at the well The water reeked And the pulley creaked And the choice was not a good one But then she remembered The power in her cane Then she remembered that You can strike water Like you can strike oil Like you can strike gold And guided by the drops That plumped up her cells Guided by a memory of jugs Sitting on women's heads Guided by the waters that broke Many years ago in her body And those that flowed in her pleasure She set off to re-invent necessity.II. Days of smoldering and incantations
Days of smoldering and incantations While at the junction feet fail to lift As you listen to the birds Crying out their tweets And lizards lay glued To steaming rocks Days of thunder at a distance And sunspots beckoning A glowing motion To continental drift As the stuffed and the starving sit Waiting for the drone to strike And deliver Fear in the soul.III. In praise of those unwilling to suspend disbelief
Not that they ever asked us Whether we agreed To suspend our disbelief They assumed we had done it For so long It had become our second skin Not that they ever asked us Whether We might have second thoughts About us and our offspring And the seven generations Staying in that scaly chrysalis Wrapped in our spit And theirs Our wings never breaking free Condemned to the crampedness Of a still birth
(unpublished, the third piece was published in an Italian tranaaltion in the anthology "Cuoredi preda" a female poets' anthology against violence o0n women that came out in 2012)
DAMASCENE TRIPTYCH
I. The planets blaring symphonically At the rhythm and rage of crickets You'd better listen to the dispatches sent As they scour their delicate limbs In this summer of orbs and fires running wild In this longest inhabited city in the world You skulk to avoid the sharpshooter Embers under your feet Can't even slouch towards Bethlehem Carrying the weight of a crumbling colossus On your frail shoulders Not all that is solid melts into That scorching Sahel wind Some is trapped in translucent phase And powers the blades That turn the dream II. Scatter around the petals Of that Damascene rose Wash the feet of the dreamer Who threads on the thin Filaments of dignity She doesn't fall from a high horse Blinded by soul numbing visions She walks the earth Scattering about The petals of deferred dreams III. You sit in the eye of the storm As the shackles of the West And the cowardice of the East Tighten around the wrist Of brown hands picking The rotten fruit of inequality To be served on the tables of power You dance in the eye of the storm As flares breaking free from the sun Millions of miles away Perhaps radiate a soul purifying heat You are blowing in the eye of the storm As the species teeters Between dream and nightmare Evolution or extinction With its nail of unmanned flight And its crown of resilient queen bees
(Published in the online journal The Palestine Chronicle)