PROLOGUE TO AFRICAN CONSCIENCE

Belatengeta-Poet Laureate-Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin, Ethiopia’s premier versatile and prolific man of letters. For half a century now he has been continuously productive as poet, playwright, essayist, social critic, philologist, historiographer, dramatist, synthesis, peace-activist, artistic a director... on matters national, continental and global.

... Born in the highland village of Boda, near Ambo , west of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa 17 August 1936 died in Manhattan on 26 February 2006.

Prologue to African Conscience

Tamed to bend

Into the model chairs

Carpentered for it

By the friendly pharos of its time

The black conscience flutters

Yet is taken in.

it looks right

It looks left

It forgets to look into its own self:

The broken yoke threatens to return

Only, this time

In the luring shape

Of luxury and golden chains

That frees the body

And enslaves the mind.

Into its head

The old dragon sun

Now breathes hot civilization

And the wise brains

Of the strong sons of the tribes

Pant

With an even more strange suffocation.

Its new self awareness

(In spite of its tribal ills)

Wishes to patchits torn spirits together:

Its past and present masters

(With their army of ghosts

That remained to haunt the earth)

Hook its innermost soul

And tear it apart:

And the african conscience

Still moans molested

Still remains drifting uprooted.

Dreamer

A lover love-rejected

With a spirit dejected,

A monk God-forsaken

hose total Faith is shaken,

Are less lost than dreamer

Into whose peace a “ question “

Plunged like a knife

And woke him to life,

To search, to find his way

To dodge, to fight his way

NOT dream it away !

Guilty?

On the grave of my friend, I stood.

For blood and flesh, I stayed . . .

And with faith I prayed, and prayed;

For blood and flesh, he was robed

. . .And with doubt, I hoped, and I hoped.

On the grave of my friend, as I stayed;

… On my future, I brood .

I stood on the grave of a man.

A tomb-stone of a man, I burdened.

The grave of a man, I murdered:

And with hope, my future, I sketched,

When with prayer, my killer hand, I stretched.

On the tomb-stone, of the man, I murdered:

. . Urrahh!!! I won!

On my victim’s carcass, I climb.

While on his tomb, I tread …

My bloody fingers, I spread:

Thus to repent, to justify, I have tried …

While I hoped, and prayed, I have cried.

And I won, my daily wine, and bread!

… Is it a crime?

Who Is On Whose Way

I did not know, oh sir, that I stood on your way,

It all happened in chance; argument is unfit,

If we fight, others will benefit,

And as this road is also where my future lay,

Destiny forces me to answer you with “ Nay “

Pray lose no temper: lest you commit

A risk to result in a regrettable wit,

For, if there be crime, guilty is just the day:

I am also in yours as you are in my shoes

So do let us shift sir, to either side

However painful it becomes, we should, though

We realize that it isn’t much to lose

That in spite of us the way is wide

And that after all, someday, both of us go.

Tears Inevitable

Showers of anguish

Rain, do not exhaust

Ocean of revenge

Of the innermost

Voice of the betrayed

Comfort of the lost,

Tears torn of self

Blood of the heart.<