"Bird of Passage," by Dennis Scott

The poet is speaking.
The window reflects his face.
A bird crawls out of the sun. Summoned.
Its wings are like tar.
That is because it is very hot.
The poet sweats too.
There is a beak at the back of his throat--
the poem is difficult,
his tongue bleeds.
That is because the bird is not really
dead. Yet.
Clap a little.
© Dennis Scott

[More on this poet...]

"Dark August," by Derek Walcott

So much rain, so much life like the swollen sky
of this black August. My sister, the sun,
broods in her yellow room and won't come out.

Everything goes to hell; the mountains fume
like a kettle, rivers overrun; still,
she will not rise and turn off the rain.

She is in her room, fondling old things,
my poems, turning her album. Even if thunder falls
like a crash of plates from the sky,

she does not come out.
Don't you know I love you but am hopeless
at fixing the rain? But I am learning slowly

to love the dark days, the steaming hills,
the air with gossiping mosquitoes,
and to sip the medicine of bitterness,

so that when you emerge, my sister,
parting the beads of the rain,
with your forehead of flowers and eyes of forgiveness,

all will not be as it was, but it will be true
(you see they will not let me love
as I want), because, my sister, then

I would have learnt to love black days like bright ones,
The black rain, the white hills, when once
I loved only my happiness and you
© Derek Walcott

Related Link: Why I trust Derek Walcott more than my Pastor

Song, Somewhere Near Roma

If I could
I'd like to talk about
Riding on your back
Through Sotho-speaking
Mountains in the snow,
Lost naked
In an overwhelming sky.
We'd talk about
How nice today has been,
How still you could learn
Life from me,
From my tribe.
But how can we now,
With all this blood?
© John Matshikiza

A picture of Roma, Lesotho. Roma is the location of the National University of Lesotho.

Stars of Stone

Today the stones I know will nick
our skulls, then knock our souls
from us. It is so. For under stars
that are but burning stone,
we held each other. Named for light,
Nurbibi clung to me, her back
against the flat roof of my house
warding off earth, hanging
under heaven. Face-down,
I gripped her shoulders, smelled
the stone-roof through the rug.
Nurbibi may have stared
over my shoulder at the stars,
those burning bits of far-off stone.

And she may have seen four men's eyes
hanging above us in their own,
unmoving flame. Eyes of stone,
heads shrouded in swathes
of scripture. So I, Turyalai,
am bound. And on my knees.
And Nurbibi, in whose loins I sought
some God, is now almost at one
with earth, buried to her waist
next to me. We wait
for the seekers of God
and their ceremony of the stone.
Men we do not know will come
and let stone speak, first in whispers

then in what they must believe
a chattering of angels
when the crowd erupts and rocks arc
but in parabolas far short
of reaching God, that must return
to earth. Men who do not know us.
Men who cannot know
that even as we wronged my wife,
in union we created God. In come-cries
caught in the throat, we made Him.
And made Him ours, gave Him some voice
even as He was in the still of night
as He is now, inchoate
before the hard and burning stars.
© Rustum Kozain, This Carting Life (Kwela/Snailpress, 2005)

The author blogs at Groundwork

Turyalai and Nurbibi were accused of adultery and stoned to death by the Taliban in November 1996.

Ed's note:
I found few links that actually talk about the unfortunate killing. This one is from the NYT. This is a more complete account of life under the Taliban. Rustum's poem, however, remains to me the most veritable teller of the horror that went on that day.