{"id":211,"date":"2011-05-19T10:12:49","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T10:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/?page_id=211"},"modified":"2012-05-17T01:39:09","modified_gmt":"2012-05-17T01:39:09","slug":"tade-ipadeola","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/writings\/poetry\/tade-ipadeola","title":{"rendered":"Tade Ipadeola"},"content":{"rendered":"
(From \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sahara Testaments\u00e2\u20ac\u009d)<\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n

Senegal<\/h1>\n

The fishwife in her wooden market stall<\/p>\n

Tucks in a franc into her black brassiere,<\/p>\n

Smiles as she hands over the fish. She is tall<\/p>\n

Her teeth glisten whiter than the sassier<\/p>\n

Neighbour\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, whiter than any woman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, so white<\/p>\n

I wondered if God knew she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d make it<\/p>\n

Into a magnet for custom and light.<\/p>\n

I did not ask her name, I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pit<\/p>\n

My halting French against her effortless river<\/p>\n

Of Bambara and market French. I forget<\/p>\n

What the fish tasted like, not the fever<\/p>\n

Of curiosity, flaring as it did from a nugget<\/p>\n

Of ivory that blinded my wandering eyes.<\/p>\n

That woman was Senegal. Senghor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s woman<\/p>\n

Immortal in her blackness, market wise<\/p>\n

Bringing back tides of the musings of a man<\/p>\n

On a land made for poetry, the perfect<\/p>\n

Turn of every phrase. In all of these<\/p>\n

The desert was ever present, its idiolect<\/p>\n

Suffusing the streets with a certain ease<\/p>\n

Found in the Sahel, elegant, understated<\/p>\n

Borderland dexterity, animist bon vivant<\/p>\n

Measured out in bright speech that elated<\/p>\n

With the germinal wisdom of the sun.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/h1>\n

Mauritania<\/h1>\n

Skeletal soil, turgid hematite – this land of iron<\/p>\n

Sires the toughest men, or else the hardiest<\/p>\n

Women, patient-eyed, ruled by one criterion:<\/p>\n

To live. They all are aloes, the truest<\/p>\n

Found anywhere on earth, a people like baobabs<\/p>\n

Like cactus, gypsum-grown in their stalwart roots.<\/p>\n

Their stoic laughter, one with the breeze, dabs<\/p>\n

Sweat off the day. Common error calls them coots<\/p>\n

Until their hubbub reins the night. They are men,<\/p>\n

Makers, fishermen of sea and the Senegal river.<\/p>\n

They are the people, the sandstone women<\/p>\n

Singing shunted songs with Time the weaver –<\/p>\n

They are strands of rare value in the fabric<\/p>\n

Africa claims. I sing of them, people of dance,<\/p>\n

Whose music retains the stuff and rubric<\/p>\n

Of north-winds and easterlies, of deep romance.<\/p>\n

By some strange code, the camera is suspect.<\/p>\n

The tourist held in doubt. If he is of colour,<\/p>\n

Deemed dangerous, watched in every aspect.<\/p>\n

Even now, rewriting history and ancient lore.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, on the radio, speaking known tongues<\/p>\n

Voices float in, proclaiming freedom from forced fealty<\/p>\n

And in those moments, unbidden, come bright songs<\/p>\n

Like muscled blackbirds, shattering the cruelty<\/p>\n

Of pigment predestined bondage. They were thrice freed<\/p>\n

And in a trice yoked again, their hope accumulates<\/p>\n

Accustomed to that deferred summer of their breed<\/p>\n

Waiting here and in the Foggara, planting dates<\/p>\n

In daylight, growing dreams at night, seeking<\/p>\n

Wider architectures amidst the ruins of Arab industry.<\/p>\n

They farm freedom in acres of their weakening<\/p>\n

Chains, find faith to rise with the dawning century<\/p>\n

So that Mauritania, aboriginal, a million times robbed<\/p>\n

Can sprout with eucalyptus. The law was made<\/p>\n

A double ass here, while backs still throbbed<\/p>\n

A mock parliament decreed, and slavers were paid \u00e2\u20ac\u201c<\/p>\n

Compensated for villainy. Three centuries of wrong<\/p>\n

Found no redress \u00e2\u20ac\u201c no flowers of the mint<\/p>\n

No token forty acres. But the Negro, he is strong;<\/p>\n

And she bears her children with faces set as flint.<\/p>\n

In Nouakchott, the Haratin bears a scar as old<\/p>\n

As the Marib dam in Yemen. Time transmutes<\/p>\n

Adam\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s abdication of green to greed for gold –<\/p>\n

Equally hurtful – equally rank with seed for disputes<\/p>\n

So that memory suffers seizures with the script<\/p>\n

Written in blood, of infants where a river<\/p>\n

Carries on the crimson communion of child and conscript<\/p>\n

Down, deep down, into Senegal\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s waiting fever<\/p>\n

A fever nothing bitter breaks, boiling with blood<\/p>\n

And pogrom-history, a fever nursed by greed,<\/p>\n

By ethnic land-grab, spilling black exiles abroad<\/p>\n

South into savannah and bone-deep vengeful creed.<\/p>\n

Nouakchott teeters on the edge of waiting retribution,<\/p>\n

Seismic, somnolent, but there. Surrounded by the poetry<\/p>\n

Of justice, songs of change into that transition<\/p>\n

Beyond bland letters of law and the paltry<\/p>\n

Remedies of pale jurisprudence. Mauritania waits<\/p>\n

For oracles of natural justice and liberation<\/p>\n

From shackles forged in fear, at hunger\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gates,<\/p>\n

For surcease from blood as legal libation.<\/p>\n

<\/h1>\n

Migrations<\/h1>\n

It took a desert\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s heat to revisit the sorrow<\/p>\n

Of mothers. Those for whom the world entire<\/p>\n

Was Ramah. Women for whom no tomorrow<\/p>\n

Offered lasting solace. Whose rueful tears tire<\/p>\n

Not. It did not matter, saint or courtesan<\/p>\n

If a son or daughter cannot be found<\/p>\n

In the wake of a slaving raid, as one woman<\/p>\n

They mourned freeborn children now bound<\/p>\n

And their anguish rolled loose like the lexeme<\/p>\n

Of the desert, whose monotonous eye rhymes<\/p>\n

Deep and wide, was temptation to blaspheme:<\/p>\n

Offspring crossing boundaries to another time.<\/p>\n

Elemental in their sackcloth, the women wept<\/p>\n

Their way to private purgatories, where pain<\/p>\n

Was alpha and omega, where torture, adept<\/p>\n

As priests at inquisition, defamed old Spain.<\/p>\n

The names of children, sons and lovers<\/p>\n

Accumulated in the store of memory and spilled<\/p>\n

Out of bounds, the names of brothers,<\/p>\n

The names of those who fought, those killed<\/p>\n

Resisting the tide. These names rose a monument<\/p>\n

Through time, through stormy weather and fair,<\/p>\n

Onomastic totems, towering where they went<\/p>\n

Invincible. Names invisible and essential as air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(From \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sahara Testaments\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) Senegal The fishwife in her wooden market stall Tucks in a franc into her black brassiere, Smiles as she hands over the fish. She is tall Her teeth glisten whiter than the sassier Neighbour\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, whiter than any woman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, so white I wondered if God knew she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d make it Into a magnet for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":203,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"authorpoetry.php","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-211","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1298,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/211\/revisions\/1298"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}