Andizi ndisaqula* (for Nelson Mandela)
By Robert Anthony Gibbons
" it therefore becomes necessary for the writer to make repeated unending exploration of the same territory since every journey throws new truths." (Derek Walcott)
we want to plant an old soul in new ground, this time, this death of death,
the mass of everlasting, the year has become a pure spirit, a disappearance of the great matriarchs and patriarchs, the saints and ancestors, but who will be left, after the judgment, after Harriet Tubman great Sojourner Truth meets Deborah and Ruth, want to plant an old soul in new ground, to call us the new black, the new white, the new color, the renaissance of the African naissance, and he died on the congo cross, on the coptic, with helicopter and fuselage, with a barrage of bullets into humanity in Robbins, with Dennis, with Tutu, with the blue blood, the defrock, the elder and the griot, and displace him underground, and what is Africa to me
nothing to do with my American, my black boy on the corner of Lenox; nothing to do with my brothers without, marginalize, penalize, on the jury of their peers, their fear of a black nation, the care not to lose control, and we are a redistrict, we are a red line, we are a double standard, in this old soul, in this new ground, and there are sure to be war, and immigration, and welfare, and emancipation, who will celebrate another born, and a better way; in my neighborhood, in my could if I could; in my want because I want; there is the paradox
and he is pure spirit and pure voice; his history in the chariots of James Weldon Johnson and W.E.B. Dubois, in this call to Pan-African; this Negritude, and all the poets of the black bottom; without language, just anger in poverty; a slaughter of bulls for sacrifice; die dancing, and praising the lesser gods, and the rape of a Kimberly mine, the fall of Sun City, the pity of pittance, the meager trope of this present age, and the singing shall stop, the hymns shall be no more, in this colonial antebellum
and do not title me reverie, more rivalry than chivalry, more killing fields, than to till this soil and there is oil beneath earth, where smoke and mirth, and acid, and masses of burial mounds are found again, freedom for the free, in a free land, one hundred sonnets burn across the bloody sky until our end or our destruction; to fuse what was with what is; I remain undone.
By Robert Anthony Gibbons
" it therefore becomes necessary for the writer to make repeated unending exploration of the same territory since every journey throws new truths." (Derek Walcott)
we want to plant an old soul in new ground, this time, this death of death,
the mass of everlasting, the year has become a pure spirit, a disappearance of the great matriarchs and patriarchs, the saints and ancestors, but who will be left, after the judgment, after Harriet Tubman great Sojourner Truth meets Deborah and Ruth, want to plant an old soul in new ground, to call us the new black, the new white, the new color, the renaissance of the African naissance, and he died on the congo cross, on the coptic, with helicopter and fuselage, with a barrage of bullets into humanity in Robbins, with Dennis, with Tutu, with the blue blood, the defrock, the elder and the griot, and displace him underground, and what is Africa to me
nothing to do with my American, my black boy on the corner of Lenox; nothing to do with my brothers without, marginalize, penalize, on the jury of their peers, their fear of a black nation, the care not to lose control, and we are a redistrict, we are a red line, we are a double standard, in this old soul, in this new ground, and there are sure to be war, and immigration, and welfare, and emancipation, who will celebrate another born, and a better way; in my neighborhood, in my could if I could; in my want because I want; there is the paradox
and he is pure spirit and pure voice; his history in the chariots of James Weldon Johnson and W.E.B. Dubois, in this call to Pan-African; this Negritude, and all the poets of the black bottom; without language, just anger in poverty; a slaughter of bulls for sacrifice; die dancing, and praising the lesser gods, and the rape of a Kimberly mine, the fall of Sun City, the pity of pittance, the meager trope of this present age, and the singing shall stop, the hymns shall be no more, in this colonial antebellum
and do not title me reverie, more rivalry than chivalry, more killing fields, than to till this soil and there is oil beneath earth, where smoke and mirth, and acid, and masses of burial mounds are found again, freedom for the free, in a free land, one hundred sonnets burn across the bloody sky until our end or our destruction; to fuse what was with what is; I remain undone.
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