Featured Poet Sylvie Kandé Haiku

Le lait de la lune Goutte sur les plis du drap Parfum de l'absent Chant du muezzin Qui tombe du minaret Une écaille vole L'enfant court: j'ai vu Un lamantin mort au bord D'un marigot sec Soleil corde au cou Trainé en grande poussière Poisseux le coton

The milk of the moon Drips on the folds of the sheet Perfume of the absent one The call of the muezzin Descends from the minaret A fish scale takes flight The child bursts forth: I saw A dead mammy-water on the shore Of a dried lagoon Sun rope round neck Dragged through the thick dust Sticky red cotton

Memory Board I.           In his Travels, Ca' Da Mosto tells of the nomads from the North who come to Mali once a year to place their load of salt in little piles on the beach, and then withdraw to a half-day's distance.           Then the people from the surrounding areas approach, set down a purse filled with powdered gold in front of each pile of salt, and vanish in a similar fashion.           Precious particles of dust!           The people from the North then return to take stock of the deal; if satisfied, they carry off the gold; if disappointed, they take back their loads of salt, without touching the offering.           This manner of trade is called silent barter.           It is said that one day, the king of Mali, desirous of knowing the face and voice of these wandering shadows, had one of them captured by surprise. The prisoner was questioned in all the languages of the Empire, from within and beyond its borders. He died without a sigh after four days had passed. (Translated from the French by Christopher Winks.)                      Memory Board II.           One day, I saw a painted picture in a great museum of mankind. Toussaint, on horseback in the midst of a red uprising, was cleaving the moon in twain with his large tempered-steel saber. It is beautiful and good to be just, and to be upright in the stirrups as well. How proud he looks, this hero astride his chestnut horse! With broken heart, I knew though that impurity pleases me most, and still more the movement that shifts the lines. At that time, I was living in a rather ugly room on rue Petion.           When he arrived at Fort-de-Joux, Toussaint's only luggage was his diary, resting atop his head underneath his bandanna. No cockade, because they had removed it on the spot, in order to confide it to the tender mercies of two guards who stripped him and then gave him a full-body search ;— with the aid of a poker. They grab hold of the bundle of papers.           — What's all this then (they guffawed) a scribbling nigger poet know-it-all? They hurl the manuscript into the grate to stimulate the fire. The tear welling up in the old Warrior's eye rolls down and congeals upon his gray cheek. In the church of a neighboring parish, Suzy, his wife, with eyes as slow as gondolas bowed down low, a prayer.           — A queer bird (said the jailers). Calmly, they resume their game of faro or poker. The days are long at Fort-de-Joux and neither one knows how to read. (Translated from the French by Christopher Winks.) The witches           Instead of fading when evening comes, the blue of the sky turns purple and gradually shades into violet. During these mauve-tinted hours, the old man is accustomed to taking the air —fairly pleased, says he, with this porch devoid of a rocking chair. Seated on an overturned bucket, his chin nestled in the hollow of his chest, he resembles a wooden Senufo bird patiently resting on its base. As the breeze stirs his hair, he silently pieces together a memory of bygone times, from yesterday or yesteryear. Memory is an onerous mistress and falls with even greater weight upon the elders.           At times, a trio of crows rises from the patch of ripened corn, frightened by the rustling of the shriveled leaves. Their plaintive caws allow the old man to gauge the nearby limits of his land, already dissolved into all that dusk. Sometimes his masculine voice, which carries audible regrets and a lingering trace of joy, trembles feebly and bursts into fanfare: "So, boy, they visited you, yet, eh ? You already heard them on the stroke of midnight, force wide open your refuge? Oh, hush your mouth now, you hear? If they'd ever visited you, there'd be no hesitation in your mind…!           Then he begins telling all about how, after nightfall, when he would return to his trailer parked near the construction site, the she-devils would begin their siege and end up invading his dwelling and cruelly triumphing over his worn-out soul. One straddled with great effort his pain-wracked body; another dug into his chest with her steel claws; and the third, dripping from bittersweet juices, blew her musky breath into his face. "At the time, my wife was living in Chicago with her mother and three of our children. I went to see her whenever I could, which wasn't very often." Now the darkness is complete and the air, mellower. "But they've been leaving my bed in peace for a long time now. They've gone for good. No more witches' gatherings ! Maybe on account of the dogs…" The old man whistles for one of his watchdogs, the one with reddish fur and a loud mouth, a faithful companion of his solitary journeys. Because it's been ages since his wife abandoned him to those godless hussies—that's what she called them—neither fish nor fowl! Standing now on the stairs, the old man raises his left arm high as if asking the rain for mercy. Walks down the steps to sit at the wheel of his white Honda, starts the engine, but dozes off, with the door still open. (Translated from the French by Yata Kandé and Christopher Winks.) (Sylvie Kandé teaches in the department of Comparative Humanities at SUNY-Old Westbury. Her scholarly work deals with new urban identities resulting from migrations and conversations between Africa and the West. Terres, Urbanisme et Architectures Créoles en Sierra Léone, 18ème-19ème Siècles (L'Harmattan, Paris 1998), is a study of the repatriation of Black people to Sierra Leone, and the resulting Creole culture that developed in Freetown. She organized an NYU colloquium in 1997 on métissage (mixed racial identity) in the Francophone context. Her paper, Discours sur le métissage, identités métissage, was published in 1999. "Lagon, Lagunes", a long piece of poetic prose, with an afterword by Edouard Glissant, was published in 2000 by Gallimard. Ms. Kandé's haiku are included in the forthcoming Anansi anthology edited by Renee Sheree Thomas, and other poems are due out in Alan M'Abanckou's Anthology of the New African Poets.Various articles have been published in La Nouvelle Revue Française, Cambridge History of African & Caribbean Literatures, Research in African Literatures, La Revue Francophone de Louisiane and Callaloo. She is a member of the Pen American Center subcommittee on prison writing.) Note: Sylvie Kandé's poems appear by express permission of the author. The unauthorized reproduction or use thereof in the U.S. or elsewhere is prohibited. 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