Lenrie Peters: 9 poems from “Katchikali” (1971)

Lenrie Peters: 9 poems from “Katchikali” (1971)
. . .
Things perplex me
irritate and disgust me
Things disaffect me
when they try
to make me crawl.
.
Things persecute me
Those which try to usurp me
Things that have
no meaning
without me.
.
Things annoy me
when others worship them
Things that approximate I
to me and are
put in my place.
.
Things nauseate me,
good, bad, indifferent
Things; like flies
in a calabash
of sour milk.
.
I prefer people
laughter and comfort
the use and pleasure of science.
But my head aches when all I hear is
THINGS, THINGS, THINGS.

. . .

The Spectator
waits uncommitted
in his dry shell
hoping to see
both heaven and hell.
Silently watching
The Protagonists
use muscled fists.
Flinching when
the Referee is kicked.
Silence has many voices.
.
Soon
He must come down
to search the empty attic
for his pistol;
where thieving mice
have nibbled
at the bullets,
And he unpractised
soils his trouser pocket.
For silence has many voices.
.
He turns aside
ducking the first assault
which unconventionally
is rightly aimed.
Handsomely maimed,
he wants to know
the reason for his chains.
Silence has many voices.

. . .

I have chosen
The thick smudged layers of experience
For the fixed stare of a child.
.
I have chosen
The coloured phantoms, superficial greens and reds
For the dreamless sleep of a child.
.
I have broken
The glass eye of innocence
Which does not pigeon-hole, despise entomb
Dress in monsters’ masks
Those that have not shared the womb.
.
I have not said:
All men are children
Playing at the game
The happy game of living
From dawn till evening.
.
The poet’s heart is in a desert place
But when the winds blow
The sweat tumbles
The tears flow
The darkness lightens.

. . .

I came expecting much
turned-over soil
and acres laid with green
at least two solid ventures in between
.
don’t try to change a thing
we’ve been this idle
since the world began
the whole idea of progress is a fiddle
.
Go up the bush
and learn bush medicine.
Better than you were messed about
on higher antipodean flights
.
Hyenas dig up graves
micro-homini play with destinies.
Still I suppose no worse
than Oppenheimer and his nuclear pebbles.

. . .

The weaver-birds are nesting
shh! the weaver-birds are
happy the long day through
.
says one to another
twit-twit. I have two eggs
all shiny and white
.
shh says the other;
I’m equally bright.
Look into the water
and I’m standing on my head.
.
the weaver-birds are nesting
all yellow and black
like candles in low evening
festooning the river shrubs.
.
Be quiet snores the Hippo
one watery eye awake.
I cannot hear my dinner snap;
submerged, the crocodile complains.
.
but the weaver-birds are nesting
and so the world must wait.
They sing from dawn till evening
and next morning, they’re the first to wake.

. . .

Little one, you came
into the world knowing
nothing of misery and shame
.
when we first met
your bone cloaked in skin
your budding grace within
.
but after two days
the magic of the painless smile
the freedom of easy breath
.
Your mother said
how pleased, how happy
she was about the rest
.
I said: there was the valley
of the dead
where skeletons grow
.
and when my back was turned
she listened to another voice
snatched you forever away
.
into the world of nowhere
to die. Your footprints
will not see the day
.
but her conscience is clear
Allah! the will of the unknowing
uncaring spell of the evil eye.

. . .

It is time for reckoning Africa
time for taking stock
never mind New York, America –
it’s ours; is here, and running short
.
too long we have dragged
our slippered feet
through rank disorder
incompetence, self defeat
.
in the high capitals
the angry men; angry
with dust in their heads
a dagger at each other’s throats
.
‘Maudors’ sit on wicker thrones
ghosted by White ants
a hundred Marabus at hand
living on the fat of the land
.
all threatening coups
and claiming vast receipts
like winsome children
feeding on mother’s milk.
.
The seats of Government
leveled at the dice
they get the most
who tell the biggest lies
.
while honest men stand
waiting at the door
or rot in prison cells,
the vultures feed on sturgeon’s eggs
the riot squads
parade the avenues
like lion prides
testing their sinews
.
and every trembling heart
retires as evening falls
crushed by the weight of hours
till daylight comes
.
oh country of great hopes
and boundless possibilities
will the seed grain
perish for ever
.
will rivers run
endlessly with blood,
saints resort to massacre
and all your harvests burn?
.
will no one see
no sign instruct
till Noah’s ark
comes sailing on the flood?
.
between Alpha and Omega
is now; Africa
this is the lost time
and future time; Africa.
.
In this all revolutions end
and the straight path
from world to better world
branded across the sky.

. . .

Come let us listen together
sounds, blue, black, golden
the sea tossing the sky
yonder round an island.
Dolphin wings afloat
showers of ripe harvest
on groundnut hills
brown and white sands
in sunset; magenta seas.
They ring serene
calling with palms and drums.
The Atlantic speaks;
calling, howling, rushing
serpentine against the heated
powers of the desert.
.
A slender river flows
three hundred miles to harbour;
wide-mouthed towards the sun,
down inguinal pursuit
of open sea; tomorrow
fenced by mangroves,
settlements, ancient traditions,
The Gambia flows;
a trusting limb of elegance.
.
It flows with mirth,
an emblem flowing endlessly
through all vicissitudes;
cataracts of change, prosperity,
decline, but rising westward
dominates the strange passions
which lie about her shores.
The river flows into
a conclave of retreat
where flesh was laid
on naked bones
where first I woke to hear
the anger of the sea.
.
Four centuries ago
strange creatures rocked her shores
with greed, the branding iron,
then shut the door, on time.
Vintage of colonies
hanging precariously in
need of help. Take
nobly your sceptre with the rest
and step into the future.
.
Can any good thing come
out of Gambia? Wait.
nay; go and see.

. . .

The mind
Is like the desert winds
Ploughing the empty spaces
Listless, fastidiously laying down the dust.
gold as the ‘purdahed’ moon
the superconcentration – Pile
of most violent energies.
.
The mind
is the Southern Pole
Of men’s greatness.
At once the cancellation – And the equilibrium
after the riddle
which shrouds the magnificent darkness.
.
The mind
which will arrive upon the ageless shore
to find the barren senses there
forever shipwrecked on the tides of passion.
to find the sum total of existence
itself the explanation and the vision.
. . . . .

All poems from: Katchikali (poems) © Lenrie Peters, published in 1971 by Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., and number 122 in Heinemann’s African Writers Series. (“Katchikali” is the name of a sacred crocodile pool in Bakau, near Gambia’s Atlantic coast.)
A biographical paragraph about Peters – from the back cover of his 1965 novel The Second Round (the 1969 reprint is featured in the photograph above):

“Lenrie Peters was born in Bathurst, Gambia, on September 1st, 1932. In 1949 he moved to Sierra Leone and went to Prince of Wales School, Freetown, where he gained his Higher School Certificate in science subjects. In 1952 he left Freetown to study in England. In between reading Natural Sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge, becoming president of the African Students’ Union, interesting himself in politics – he is a Pan-Africanist – and writing poetry and plays, he started The Second Round. After qualifying in medicine in London he did special work in surgery and is now practising in Bathurst.”
.
His surgery clinic in Banjul (formerly called Bathurst) operated for many years – during which Dr. Peters continued to write and publish poetry. He died in 2009 at the age of 76 in Dakar, Senegal.
.
Critical commentary from Delalorm Sesi Semabia (African Soulja: African Poetry Review):
Peters is considered one of the most original voices of modern African poetry. A member of the African founding generation writing in English, he showed extensive pan-Africanism in his various volumes of poetry. His poems were mixed with medical terms, and sometimes his later works were angrier at the state of Africa than were his earlier volumes of poetry.