Nieu-Bethesda

I seldom write poems about places

My poetry is inspired by the spaces

Seldom unique but always resonating

In my mind: with my soul.

Places are found in history and legend

Spaces we nurture in secret with a smile

And what it is for me is seldom what it is for you

Yet similar in what we profess to hold true.

The poems have been written

And the verses have been sung

The quiet, the calm, the peaceful charm,

The blanket of stars that don’t always shine.

I walk these paths now

Where a different history is mingled with the dust

Just faded clouds of memory in the distance

Changed and changing with every step.

This place is divided and set apart

The space is complete fulfilling this traveler’s heart

The people I’ve met whose smiles have touched

Beneath the surface there lurks so much.

So sad how many can gaze at beauty

With a jaundiced eye mired in iniquity

Perfection cannot exist in a bubble

Denial does not take away the trouble.

Yet hope perseveres in the flowing river

The crisp clean air and the humble giver

The stars that fill the firmament above

And the brilliant glow of selfless love.

So I thank you all as I find my place

Humble and honoured I share the space

Where the dreams of a hundred ghosts roam free

And the past and future are allowed to be.

LITTLE THINGS

It’s the fleeting smile at the crack of dawn

Standing amongst the crush of commuters

On your way to a job that you really don’t like

And your thoughts are at home cuddled up in bed.

It’s that random act of kindness during the lunch hour rush

When you finally get to the front of the queue

Only to discover that your money is in your desk drawer

And a stranger ends up buying your lunch.

It’s an anonymous word of encouragement

Just when you are about to give up

That makes you dig deep into an untapped reserve

That sees you across the finishing line with a flourish.

It’s the look of understanding that bridges the divide

As you teeter on the brink of depression

Bringing relief amid the heartache and tears

And your soul’s sigh is transformed into a smile.

It’s the acknowledgement when you feel most unappreciated

The whispered words or the gentle touch

The phone call and the email or that letter in the mail

Or the jaunty knock of an unexpected visitor

It’s the hand of friendship and the compassion gesture

The simple little things that remind me that I am not alone.

INADEQUATE!

Green is such an inadequate word

Unable to describe the colours I see before me

The adjectives and superlatives fail to capture;

The shades and hues are far too real to express

And when seen like this across a windswept spring-scape

The best I can do is say: “I wish you were here!”

One word is inadequate

Unable to describe the abundant nuances of the seemingly mundane

A whisper that can be described in a hundred different ways

Without ever conveying what was not said

And I look at everything happening around me

The best I can do is say: “I wish you could see this!”

Inadequate is the word that best describes

How we continually fail to perceive that our will has been reduced

Reduced to a race of unseeing watchers, mere spectators

Unable to embrace our potential for fear of failure

And I hear your facts and stats and scriptures and lies

The best I can do is say: “I wish you would think before you talk!”

All of these inadequate words

That fail to illuminate what could have been an adventure

Stringing sentences together like a chain-link handrail

To which we hold with all of our might

As we allow ourselves to be led, unthinking

Along a potholed path into the gloomy, treacherous future.

CAN I AFFORD IT?

I was conceived in the blistering heat of the golden African sun; born beneath a celestial field of diamonds; with the silvery, full moon illuminating the darkness of a pristine nocturnal African landscape.

But I was raised and became another kind of man in the bowels of the earth, mining precious metals which seldom adorn the mantel above my hearth; the back-breaking labour under a yoke of tyranny to furrow and sow and reap a harvest that doesn’t fill my stomach; my life reduced to a disposable human resource in the employ of a brutal, relentless economy whose bounty is made tenable by my sweat; my future and the future of my children, sacrificed to secure success for strangers who will never know my name.

I cannot afford to own land; or build a home; yet I must pay for my child’s education: mostly I barely survive, but I do take comfort in the fact that there are so many who have even less than me and in that abject certainty I end up owning my lot and my suffering.

But with that harsh reality, comes an uncompromised clarity – a sensitivity.

Detached, I am able to really see. I am able to see myself for whom and what I really am; I see us all beyond the constricting confines of stereotype and statistics and an imposed identity that we are all constantly persuaded to assume: no longer am I just one of countless millions living below or upon the breadline, on the street or in a shack or a sub-standard block-house where the cold wind keens through the single chink in the night’s armour; the cracked and crumbling walls, frames with cardboard windows and beneath the leaning door.

I am able to see what is happening in the world, what is happening to our ailing humanity; I see what is going on and what has gone wrong; and while we fight these fragmented, meaningless wars against enemies and demons that we’ve been sold, there is another beast watching unseen – unseeing – gloating as its omnipotence swells, sustained by avarice and the wilful ignorance as we bare witness but miserably, doggedly doubt the veracity of the evidence. That we are the unthinking, suffragists that fuel the fires of this capitalist democracy that we inherited through negotiation between urbane warlords with their own interests at heart; a settlement in which small men have become leaders through coercion and corruption, ensuring that my lot remains unchanged.

I still warm my brittle bones under the golden African sun, I still lie prostrate beneath the celestial blanket of diamonds which is my forefathers’ gaze, upon the rich fertile soil: embracing all of my wealth; the irrepressible spirit of my African soul.

This African soil where the dust of my ancestral memory lies decaying with parents and sons and daughters, buried beneath the convenient text-book lies: the powdery flaking white-wash ineffectually trying to conceal the story of an age of African prosperity.

Sometimes as I watch you turn away – unable to face the facts – I wonder ‘what is the price I have to pay for your dignity?

“Can I afford it?”