AFRICA (POESÍA-POETRY). JOSÉ MARÍA LOPERA’S BOOK.
Africa’ is the third book of poetry this year by the Spanish poet Jose
Maria Lopera. His poetry about love and by the lover surprises…
http://www.josemarialopera.com/africa.pdf
Africa’ is the third book of poetry this year by the Spanish poet Jose
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SHIVERS
Don’t you be frightened –I told her.
It is the storm
coming back again today and with more fury.
And she was shaking with fear
enfolded in the embrace of my arms,
seeking out protection between my legs,
while she was gritting her teeth,
searching with her most stubborn sinews.
The ancient baobab has welcomed us
into the damp-ridden shelter of its trunk,
hollowed out over millennia.
Rain drops were falling, crackling
in the foliage of the tree
and in the impenetrable grasses
of the unbounded savannah:
just like cooking salt
fallen into a hot fire.
The clouds were all lit up by
blinding lightning flashes
and, the fury of the thunderclaps
was making the tree shudder
from shoot tips to roots.
I was all while caressing
with my white fingers
the dark brown skin
of her beautiful face,
the wonderful origin
of her vital essence.
And I felt myself trembling
as if in the deepest regions
of the earth
and in the fecund womb of the young woman,
Africa was waking up from its lethargy
with ancestral impetus,
and was sharpening its claws
to go on the offensive.
And I felt shivers down my spine
from the guilt that I was feeling
as a white man.
And I never did know why
the rain was shivering in each and every drop
and the baobab was sighing in its perfume.
J.M.L.
(Translation: Frank SANDERS
with the help: Patricia NIETO.)
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SAINT LOUIS
Listen to me well,
you all sublime city.
I whisper it so softly in your ear
as if to give you encouragement.
I see you, I walk your ways, and I cherish you.
I sense the elegance
of the black-engendered force of your spirit
and the beautiful mixture
passed forward by your heritage.
I cherish, in the language of the Berbers,
the hustle and bustle of sea arrivals,
with abundance of fish
or illusions once again lost.
And, on the Puente de Faidherbe,
I am breathing the ferrous aroma
Of artistic ironwork
Which arrived here from France.
In your aristocratic
colonial mansions,
I’m casting my eyes out
from your balconies,
as in a sublime wing beat towards horizons
of sky, all surprising,
where the light gives me breath.
In your skies there are traces,
indelible,
of Jean Mermoz and Antoine de Saint Exupéry.
How much pleasure I get from your avenues,
furnished with colours and with aromas.
You are, beautiful Saint Louis,
an elegant signare
who seduces with a tom-tom;
a baobab flower
in a melodious kora:
a spark flying like an eagle,
that glitters brightly in your
flourishing heart.
And there passes a regal flight of flamingos,
following its way;
painting the sky in pink.
J.M.L.
(Translation: Frank SANDERS
with the help: Patricia Nieto.)
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MY ANGER’S SWORD
I am broken with amazement, in this world with its steely claws and with petroleum for a soul.
Humankind allows to happen a great larceny
against beings both defenceless and ignorant
dragged into fratricidal conflicts or into
system-wide corruption without excuse,
for theft and plunder of their liberty and their fatherland.
In a land all bare and barren, barefooted,
a woman carrying a foetus in her uterus
and with some sticks of wood balanced on her head
with which to cook for the famine of her children,
held up at gun point with an assault weapon
by an adolescent, trembles and weeps.
Further towards the south or towards the east,
in savannahs or desert sands,
the towers of oil rigs are robbing and bleeding dry.
O God, if your rule is everlastingly fair and just, then where is it, where, the sharp sword of my anger?
J.M.L.
(Translation: Frank SANDERS
