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Zambian Diptych

I

By the smoky grass huts of Mangango,
through the deep green sleep of bush,
we drive over hill after hill of orange
dirt-track, rattling and bouncing in a rust-pocked

Land Rover; a gush-swirl of dust trails behind.
With a snatch of tribal dance, gaggling
children run to greet us, hallooing:
“Aii makua! Aii makua!” Waving

their flag-a-flutter hands after us. I keep
remembering journeys into the bog-expanse
of Erris and the road to Ballyhaunis rising
and dipping, and an old man walking

with his bicycle, nodding at us as if
we were his next door neighbour. But now
we drive past a farmer droving his cow,
its arched horns menacing the sky.


II

By the river Zambesi
red poinsettias bloom
ballet-poised on wiry stems
flames of dying sun.

A freight of twig-heaped firewood
is upstream paddled
to Lukulu, where melon-huge
paw-paw fruit grows, as green-drenched

as the meadows by Laracor.
On a path of grey-sooted sand
a mother and her child,
cloth-bound to aching back,

balances on her head
a basin of cassava root
returning to her village
where useless hens peck and grub

under the sun-sheltering
cha-ka cha-ka tree;
her sterile soil
is Kalahari blown

smothering her field
from year to year
-- a silent banshee
of destruction.

Hi Jimmy,

I like this poem. I didn't comment when I first read it because I hoped someone who knows how to crit poetry would comment first. But I like it a lot. It's so poignantly evocative of rural African scenes.

Thanks,

Diane

Hi Jimmy ~

I've only just now read this and feel like I've taken a trip not just to, but into, Africa. I've always wanted to go there and this heightens my desire. When were you there? Every word microscopes in one direction or another... sounds, visuals, touch, smell, feeling... and the words chosen are so entrenched in the area and culture that you were immersed in, as an acute observer, whilst there. I really like how you divided it into two sections. I won't be selecting portions that touched, moved, or amazed me, lest I simply present your poem back to you. This appears and feels like an advanced level of journaling... all poetry allowed, inside those precious pages . It also seems I'm sitting looking at photos being shown me, pausing at each one to hear the details. Please just know how much I love it.

What is the meaning of its title, "Zambian Diptych"?

Do you subscribe to National Geographic, Jimmy? If not, you'd love it.


Very high regards,
Lizzy

MY PRINCESSS

MY HEART WAS THUMPING LIKE BA DRUM
WAITING FOR OUR BABE TO COME
DONT MATTER IFITS BOY OR GIRL
JUST AS LONG AS ITS ALIVE.
JOY LIKE THIS I COULD NOT MISS
TO ROSE I GAVE MY HAND TO KISS
MOTHER DAUGHTER THEY ARE ALL FINE
SO NOW WE POOR OUR GLASS OF WINE

SARAHROSE BECAME HER NAME
EQUANOIX THE DAY SHE CAME
EQUAL DAY AND EQUAL NIGHT
GOD i loved at first sight,


yes she is the equalizerAnd she will be 21 on the 21st of march 2007





[/b]

Hi Jimbo ~

Are you going to give your daughter a slightly-edited copy of your tribute poem to her birth? It would be a wonderful, gift from Dad, as she turns 21... I like the way the numbers worked out for her.

I like the circumstances surrounding her birth... and the way your words "Ba Drum" replicates what you've just said, the sound of a heartbeat... is that called an onomatopoeia?

If you celebrate Mother's Day in Ireland, it would also be a lovely gift for her mum on that day. Beautiful name you two chose for your daughter... SarahRose. A magical day... it sounds like she's grown up to be the same.


~ Lizzy

Thanks for the positive comments.

I spent three months teaching in Zambia many years ago.
Diptych is a folding tablet... its common for Greek Icons to fold into one another like two covers of a book.
I called this poem a diptych because I saw my experiences as two-fold. There was an overlay of my own Irish cultural experience and the African/Zambian experience. I am trying to say that there are many similarities. This is what I experienced while I was there. So, instead of Africa/Zambia being an alien experience I could connect it to Ireland and draw similarities.
After all, we are the same... we beings who are human...

Jimmy

Cheers, Jimmy. You are rather good at this poetry malarkey aren't you?

So, instead of Africa/Zambia being an alien experience I could connect it to Ireland and draw similarities.
After all, we are the same... we beings who are human...

Yes, and we human beings evolved in Africa before spreading around the world.

Who is my father's father in this world, in this house,
At the spirit's base?

My father's father, his father's father, his—
Shadows like winds

Go back to a parent before thought, before speech,
At the head of the past.

They go to the cliffs of Moher rising out of the mist

(from The Irish Cliffs of Moher by Wallace Stevens)

Diane

Wow... Diane....
I didn't realise Wallace Stevens wrote a poem on the Cliff of Moher.... or more accurately on the theme of... or inspired by... the Cliffs of Moher... must chase that one down.

Jimmy

Jimmy, it's from The Rock, his last collection of poetry, and part of Wallace Stevens Collected Poems.

The Irish Cliffs of Moher

Who is my father's father in this world, in this house,
At the spirit's base?

My father's father, his father's father, his—
Shadows like winds

Go back to a parent before thought, before speech,
At the head of the past.

They go to the cliffs of Moher rising out of the mist,
Above the real,

Rising out of present time and place, above
The wet, green grass.

This is not landscape, full of the somnambulations
Of poetry

And the sea. This is my father or, maybe,
It is as he was,

A likeness, one of the race of fathers: earth
And sea and air.