It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn. ~Robert Southey
Late nights of sipping tea and writing poetry in a journal had been replaced by late nights of drinking coffee and writing code long ago, but as I was packing up my bookshelves into boxes preparing to leave Boston for Kampala, I remembered selecting a few books to keep aside. Some books I'd already read, and read again, and read again, one of those being "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" by Jean-Dominique Bauby, but some books I had added to my bookshelves so many years back, and had not more than touched except to pack and unpack as I moved from place to place.
I chose a few of these books that I truly vowed to read which, as I stood at the Delta Air Lines check-in counter, I promised to make worth the extra weight in my bag hovering dangerously close to the 50 lb. limit. One of those books was "The Selected Levis" a collection of poems written by Larry Levis, which I had put on my Xmas list one year after briefly studying his work in college, a muse to Prof. Alex Long who taught the Introduction to Poetry class I took that Fall semester.
So a few Saturdays ago, waiting for my Luganda tutor Francis to meet for a Luganda lesson at the Makerere University Guild Canteen, I wandered into the Makerere University Bookshop, which at first seemed almost like an after thought of space leftover and unused by the canteen. The bookshop consisted of a small room lined with just 10-15 bookshelves, mostly academic, and with enough space to hold 2 more bookshelves and 1 large table mosaic'd with books with the covers facing up. I asked if they had any poetry, and was planted in front of the English Department bookshelf, which contained mostly novels, short stories, plays, and of course, just as many if not more books filled with literary critique, criticism about books I'm sure were probably not even on the bookshelf. I was starting to feel the sting of disappointment until I spotted a single paperback with "Love Poems" on the spine, yes! I plucked it off the shelf, and looked at the cover, it was a contour caricature sketch of an ambiguously Muzungu male, who I assumed to be its author Brian Patten, and slightly deflated, thought to myself, "Umm, I'm pretty sure that dude is not Ugandan."
One of the many things a poem can do / Is remind us what we forgot we knew -Brian Patten
I flipped through the book anyways to a poem about making love at 4am and immediately knew I wanted it (I went back and bought it, along with a whole anthology of Ugandan poetry, the next Saturday). The poem was reminiscent of Bukowski... that is, the Bukowski that can spin romance out of his lover's fart as she bathes in the tub just after they've had sex, but much softer, and less offensive, and with more use of meter and rhyme. I felt the urge to read more, the whole collection of poems was so succinct and inviting, I could probably get away with reading half of them just standing there without even buying the book, but then I heard myself think no, put it back! And the thing is, I really went in there to find a book of Ugandan poetry, and even before confirming my suspicions that Brian Patten is European (Liverpool, England), I was determined for my first book of poetry to be written by a Ugandan. I looked some more on the shelf near where I'd found Love Poems, and after a few more minutes, and 1 foreboding book of religious poetry that definitely wasn't my kikopo of cai (cup of tea), I pulled out a paperback from a row with a set of unmarked light blue spines, and found "African Saga" by Susan Kiguli. Susan is not only an award-winning Ugandan poet, but also a female poet, and a professor of poetry at Makerere University. I've been working my way through "African Saga", writing that is such a vivid and deeply personal perspective of Uganda, and feel once again, nourished, like I'm doing this right, especially when daily life in Uganda simply doles out surprise chunks of time in which you just have to have patience, when you find yourself waiting, for a friend, for a taxi, for water to boil, for the power to come back, these can sometimes be the best moments folded within a day, moments of simply just being. I recently even also started reading the non-fiction book "Deep Economy" by Bill McKibben, and I've been taking both of these books with me, like 2 favorite stuffed animals, wherever I go.
Crazy Peter Prattes
So what is the hullabaloo
About the minister's ailing son
That he makes boiling news?
How come it was not even whispered
When Tina's hospital bed craweled with maggots
And her eyes oozed with pus
Because the doctor's lacked gloves?
What about Kasajja's only child
Who died because the man with the key
To the oxygen room was on leave?
I have seen the queues
Of emaciated mothers clinging to
Babies with translucent skins
Faint in line
And the lioness of a nurse
Commanding tersely
"Get up or leave the line".
Didn't I hear it rumored that
The man with the white mane
And black robes
Whose mouth stores the justice of the land
Ushered a rape case out of court
Because the seven year old
Failed to testify?
Anayway I only remember these things
When I drink
They are indeed tipsy explosions.
***
The Head Tie
I wear a head tie
A legacy from mother
The centre hold of my being.
She covers the scar
On my temple
Where the police fist
Dashed me acrosst the wall.
Sometimes I tie her
Around my waist
To mourn the dead
Lest sorrow robes me
Of my only possession
And upright frame.
She is my next of kin
She houses the blood
Of my old father
Which was vomited
By his protesting chest
Against a bullet.
She is my baby's cot,
The shelter
Against wet or dry,
The nipple which baby gnaws
When hunger wakes up dawn.
***
From Susan Kiguli's African Saga (Kampala: Femrite Publications Limited, 1998).
The other day my co-worker Sheila was telling me about how her sister Beverly and some friends started the Lantern Meet of Poets, a community of poets in Kampala, and then she casually said, "You know, I think Beverly knows Susan, you could probably meet her." Heyo!
