Three Poems by Star Zahra || The Bala Selection

These three poems by Star Zahra were especially chosen for The Bala Selection.

The Bala Selection is a bi-weekly poetry feature curated by Ismail Bala for Konya Shamsrumi, showcasing distinctive new voices and resonant works from across Africa and beyond. Through his discerning eye, each selection highlights the craft, music, and emotional clarity that define contemporary poetry in its most luminous form.

Ismail Bala is a poet, translator, and critic whose work bridges classical poetics and modern sensibility, and whose mentorship has shaped a generation of emerging African poets.

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I Know

But I know,
how you too spell 
the world. 
It is like a retelling
of the same story 

The heart is heavy

The heart has seen the half-wounded face
of hardship

Young people covering Lagos with dreams,
murals of their tears and those with broken limbs,

One shout and a machete lands
but it is not flesh it takes,

It chops off, very clean,
another part of this country's peace. 

A musician at oshodi shakes his locks
to a trance,

finger strummining at a broken guitar. 
“Na madman”, a hawker says,

but she's wrong,
I can hear the music too. 

The Stranger that Parties

If you knew,
that time is passing by, this stranger
that parties with us like it here to
build a house,
would you take into your heart every breath,
every moment of beauty,
that finds its way here?

If you knew,
that the clouds are always changing,
that our bodies in bits, are accumulating
joy, and everything else,
would you run the marathon, speak the gibberish of 
your young heart,
and never miss a beat?

If you knew,
that the world is not constant, that 
life is given and life will go,
that the laughter of friends is a gift
slowly dissipating, like shadows,
would you take every word as gold,
kiss, hold, share the ecstacy of encounters
when they exist?

If you knew,
that nothing is a solid fact,
that our bodies know, from the start,
this blessed curse,
that every urge to shine, 
to dazzle,
                to fly,
                        to dance,
                                       to cry,
                                                 to love, 
                                                            is living,
                          would you skip mountains to live it?

Zazzau

for Zurain Ali


Zaria welcomes with sandstorms
that seemed to have travelled thousands of miles
to us. 

We drive through a landscape of paprika soil,
wherever I look is land,
farmers bent over their portions of it,
and children chasing cats.

Trees spread over a cluster of rocks,
and I know, this city has known things. 

There is a sign above the hot air,
that says we must leave our lives behind 
all of my head feels clear
and I see you, 
and I wished you were here. 

Zaria is like you. 
She is fierce and ancient,
something of a dream, only true. 

When I breathe, like all of our dear North, it is fresh,
of lavender and wood not burnt,
like you. 

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About Star Zahra