Reading Africa I
No white dove or rainbows*,
No exotic mirror or immaterial rituals.
No black revival or utopian eyes.
But a shadow bending over
In a dark street
in old Dakar.
Or maybe a child
Still
moving,
Reaching out for new words.
(*from the poem “Commandments” by Tony Barnstone)
Reading Africa II
It takes a poet to know
another poet,
It takes a child to find
the right words,
It takes a hand
to define the flight
freedom
is nothing but the uncanny semantics
of unstable signs.
Berkeley, December 7th 2001
