This is why I believe that, when reading a poem, we should pay less attention to what we imagine the poet intended to say and more attention to what the poem itself communicates. Instead of asking only, What has the poet said? we should also ask, What is the poem saying? What does it evoke in me? What meanings can I discover in its images, symbols, metaphors, language, structure, and silences?
I think about this now, sitting beside her bed, listening to the difficult machinery of her breathing, and I find myself revisiting some of the memories I had filed away as childhood grievances. .. Age has a way of returning old memories to us with their labels removed.
I am that song you nod and hum to but still can’t sing along with, because, sometimes, it’s too deep. Yet, it flows, attracting passersby who know nothing of the sadness within.
Sometimes, I need something to remind me I exist in the world and poetry usually brings both the questions and the answers. .. If we do not know who we are, then how can we find out what we are here for?
Africa in its potential and realities is me, it's us. It’s a reckoning with ourselves. It’s a becoming. Movement and stillness. Where past, present, and future bleed into each other.
