ignorance speaks and darkness forms in the air
ignorance will destroy this world with hate
wisdom with light will change that fate
THE INSIDER
After Camus
I wasn’t laughing.
I should have laughed.
Maybe if I’d laughed everything
Would have been different.
So it wasn’t me laughing.
It was the sun.
The sun was laughing through
The stones, the sand,
The sluggish sea.
He did not even know my name.
He did not know the name of my sister.
This is my country and to them
I do not have a name.
I do not even have a face.
How can you be sure I exist?
But this land is my land
And I have a right to be here.
I can be here, lie here
And listen to the sun
Steaming the sand.
My life’s a flute
Played by the sun.
And because of the sun
I’ve a right to honour.
I have not one
Name, but thousands;
And my names are written
By the waves of the sea
On the hot earth.
Each rock’s a punctuation.
The words of the Prophet
Are the secret truth of my days.
I am my own meaning.
All the names of the land
Are my names and even
In the shadow of this rock
I am nourished
By the love of mothers.
I watch him coming towards me.
His heart’s unclear.
For him there’s no meaning
To anything; the universe
Is empty and life is a road
That wanders into nothingness.
The sun that gives me life
Lacerates him with death.
It’s not that we are enemies.
It’s only that for him
Everything means nothing
But for me life has dignity.
Life has meaning.
Maybe that’s why
It is easy for them
To kill with their
Eyes that which to
Them has no name.
If we could talk I might
Tell him my name’s
Mamoud and that
Two weeks ago
My mother died
And I am all
My sister has
To protect her against
The violence of the world.
But I am not laughing.
Life’s grimace looks
Like laughter to one who
Wants to see it that way.
MANETHO’S BOOKS
when they come to the source
they always want information.
when they conquer they want
the secrets of the land
that its priests conceal.
and so the incas would rather
let the spaniards have the gold
which for them had little value
than reveal to them their temples
or the heart of their tiered gnosis
or their gods high up
the mountains where
peak speaks to peak
among the clouds,
the rockfaces terraced
and textured for agriculture.
ptolemy wanted the secrets
of the land of pyramids
and ordered the high priest
at sebennytus, where isis
has her temple, to write down
the dreams, philosophy
the narrative and religion
of ancient egypt. we don’t know
if manetho asked why.
we don’t know either what
manetho concealed in what he
revealed in the innumerable
volumes that flowed
from his hermes-touched stylus.
but ptolemy forbade their translation
and they were used only
for the solemn instruction
of the greeks.
manetho’s books were the central
columns of alexandria.
students of aristotle drank
from his fountain. egyptian
priests were professors at
the alexendrine schools.
eratosthenes composed,
under the impulse of the greek
spear, a chronology
of theban kings. horapollo
wrote the purest hieroglyphics
of his time. the true story
of civilisation is more obscure
than the oracles and more
twisted than cyrenean snakes.
SIWAH
sometimes journeys defy explanation.
rather, the branching off from a journey
confuses the intimate and public history.
a child plays in the hills; something
makes them wander through runnels where
they find clay pots, old assyrian shards,
or the cave of lascaux. no one knows
what made them do it, or what they
were seeking blindly in the diversion
from play, the journey made
from the back of another one.
the unplanned surprises
the fates weave as they spin
the future of all pasts. a glitch
appears in their spinning,
a bubble in the weave, an abrasion
of colours, which only art can correct.
we call that art destiny surprising us back
in echo response to our unplanned deeds.
take that famous visit to the oracle
of ammon. he’d already exhausted
himself with wars and the vast desert.
he had already pursued the edges
of personal destiny as far as it could go,
extending the limits. But the sands
were writhing with pitiless snakes
and the troops were already famished
with this conquest without
end, till the world runs out.
the persians had been routed; there
was nothing more to win except
rest and the spoils of hard conquest.
but obscure urges dwell in the hearts
of those who toil at world domination.
some say he was perplexed
by the mystery of his origins,
that he sought a father more
elevated than the mortal one,
that baffled by the teeming myths
that sprang up in his body, giving him
no rest, driving him on through numberless
obstacles, that he sought to understand
whether divinity played a part in the strange
shapes that the fates wove in his dreams,
and whispered in his long marches,
his encounters with wandering sages
and pointed through him to the sun.
he abandoned his troops and took
with him few men, and risked death
by thirst and black snakes through
that harsh desert where myths
are ruined or forged. history
relates, with more fact than truth,
that he stationed a garrison at pelusium
and along the eastern nile to heliopolis
traversed the river to memphis.
he’d struck through the burnished desert.
at memphis they crowned him pharoah.
apis received his sacrificial bulls
and the canonic branch of the nile
witnessed his branching off journey
to the fertile oasis in siwah. his greek
sandals trod as far as paraetonium,
; in ancient libyia, leaving small footprints
like dead fishes on those salt shores
of dead rivers. what did he seek
in that hallucination, that obscure quest
to the heart of myth? he disappeared
into the temple and only silence
and an unknowable man emerged
from between its tall gates.
not the same man came out as went in
some spoke of a new light on his face.
some spoke of a serenity in his eyes
that had never been there before.
the priests of that temple, where
philosophers came to be raised,
had whispered something magical
into his ears which he hadn’t heard
and in not hearing heard everything
he had ever wanted and sought
in all the disguised battles of his life.
more than all the things we’re told,
the finger pointing to the sun
in him, touched another gold.
BOKO HARAM
an unfinished poem
he came from a house
where light hadn’t been,
a hole of poverty
in the depths of the north.
the ghetto where he grew
brought him madness.
at school he kept
apart and was silent.
his eyes stared with fury.
early on he dressed
in clothes of the fanatics.
his religion came with the gun
and the loathing of beauty.
he nibbled the koran
with dreams of death.
he watched politicians
grow fat while his mother
rotted in the vile hovels
where dogs ate the corpses
of those who had died poor
and unknown. the fervid
sun ruined his mind.
he joined a sect and prayed
with a jihadi’s gun
always by his side.
when the leader
of his sect was killed
he disappeared.
no one saw him for years.
in his absence girls grew up
and dreamed of school.
the ghettoes were rotting.
schools were spreading.
girls learned to read
and count and think
and dream and soon
measure the lies.
when he returned he’d
changed out of all form.
took to murder,
blowing up streets
where the christians lived.
he grew bold. ammunitions
came to him from secret
places. again the north
held the nation’s fate,
born from a distant dream.
in the tall grass girls
chanted their songs
in the long shadows.
AMNESTY AT FORTY
The Lesson
Tyranny rises where vigilance sleeps
The light of freedom makes us strong
Tyranny rises where vigilance sleeps
The light of freedom makes us strong
Tyranny rises where vigilance sleeps
The flight of freedom makes us wrong
Tyranny rises where vigilance sleeps
The light of freedom makes us strong
Tyranny rises where vigilance sleeps
The light of freedom makes us strong
Tyranny rises where vigilance sleeps
The light of freedom makes us strong
Tyranny rises where freedom sleeps
The light of vigilance makes us strong
Tyranny rises where vigilance sleeps
The light of freedom makes us strong
Tyranny rises where vigilance sleeps
The light of freedom makes us strong
Tyranny rises where freedom sleeps
The light of freedom makes us strong
Tyranny rises where vigilance sleeps
The light of reason makes us strong
Tyranny rises where sleeps
The light of freedom makes us strong
Tyranny rises where vigilance sleeps
The light of freedom makes us strong
Tyranny rises where vigilance sleeps
The light of freedom makes us strong
Tyranny rises where vigilance sleeps
The light of freedom makes us strong
Tyranny sleeps where vigilance rises
The light of freedom makes us strong
Tyranny rises where vigilance sleeps
The light of freedom makes us strong
Tyranny rises where vigilance sleeps
The light of freedom makes us strong
Tyranny rises where vigilance sleeps
The light of reason makes us strong
Tyranny rises where vigilance sleeps
The light of freedom wakes us
REVOLUTION
they live as if everything
is settled in the world.
but nothing is settled.
not our dreams, nor our fears,
nor the boundary between things.
the land isn’t settled, nor the realm of sleep.
nor the deep mines where our fathers weep.
nor the deep wells where
mothers call out our names.
those walls of steel never kept out
the eyes of hunger that wander the world
like thunder. those stony eyes that devour
the poor with a cold gaze,
those tower blocks, those men who live
on dust and sleep on stones,
those mothers with their teeth
falling out from mercury in their food,
those children whose lungs will
not carry them through life
what do they know of boundaries,
what do they know of the gods
of the street, the gods of hunger.
nothing is settled. not our place
in the world nor our place among the dead.
the rich have not locked up all the dreams
or the power that grows in rage.
generations live on dust and debris
and are pale as ghosts but the god
of hunger powers their bodies with the secret
electricity that drives galaxies.
on the city’s edge they swell and grow.
their only education is the text of truth
which the world delivers without humour.
nothing is settled. those who think they will
inherit the earth because they’ve mortgaged
the sun will find on the eve of their usurpation
that the grim horsemen are on the horizon.
the earth shifts and howls. the sands have
turned into people. the graves speak
lucid prophecies. there’s nothing
to inherit, because nothing is settled,
except the thunder after sleep.
Dusk
A HISTORY OF NEW FORMS
hairy stone
on white stool
on metal stand.
brooding about
lost air,
incandescent paint.
those tarpaulin
concealments.
mirrors dripping
dark celestial matter.
the fan in which
wind is still.
yellow table
where caravaggio
is beheaded.
old testament
of duchamp
made into
the history
of harlem.
beyond masks
floating on sea
new dream
breaks through
hands
of silent
enchanter.
here’s where
new african
genius is made,
changing the dream-
less lids
of duchamp
into the spring
of hammons.
blue time passing.
smaller
form,
bigger
conversation.
keep moving
it away
from what
it was.
from old
field,
new time.
music
in the stone.
alchemy
in the transcended
american air.
art is that book
in which history
of new forms
is written.
by the firedreams
of harlem.
throwing
the stone
into open sea
into sunrise
over brooklyn.
REVELATIONS OF SAINT TIME
For Grace Wales Bonner
everything here is kind of true.
the true magic is the magic of you.
the world’s the shrine
and the shrine’s the world.
listen here to
the revelations of saint time.
still your hearts. breathe like new.
centre yourselves in the part
of you that’s most true.
for every cell of your body
is alive with vitality
every thought in your heart
helps to shape reality.
We’re shaping a new reality today
the way you would shape a new shrine
with the offering of your spirit
and the magical works of your hand.
were going to start a new kind
of dreaming in this land.
awake! awake! awake!
awaken the new brotherhood of dreams
awaken the new sisterhood of dreams.
from these flowers
draw new powers
build new towers.
build without fear.
It’s fear that darkens the shrine of the world.
It’s greed that darkens the shrine of the heart
stone at your feet
stone in the mind
frozen blood in the veins
dark rock in the heart.
we need a new miracle of being human.
we need a new miracle of being alive.
ancestors sleep in these shrines.
us their dreams illumine.
they planted these flowers
along black paths of time
flowers that never die
flowers that open up into
thousand forms of art and living
music in the flowers
flowers in the music.
so dedicate yourselves
to the shrine
of being and living.
wake up your feet
to the wisdom
of the earth