Poetry is not a Luxury, it is Necessary

As I move from country to country within the continent I cease to be amazed by the lives of the writers I come across. Imagine, during my research toward the end of last year, I discovered the first president of Angola, António Agostinho Neto, was also a writer before he took on his political role. As if those two roles were not enough, he attended medical school in Portugal, from there is where he became interested in politics.

For those who do not know, Angola gained its independence along with several other countries who were colonized by Portugal in 1975. Therefore, Portuguese is the main language spoken and published within the country then and now. That being said, I found it challenging to locate a hardcopy of the collection of poetry published by him in English, but I am not giving up. He became well known first published a collection of poetry in 1948.

After completing medical school he returned to Angola in 1959 and was arrested in 1960 for his radical opposition to the colonial government. He was arrested like many other African leaders in the political and literary world, Kwame Nkrumah and Ngugi wa Thiong’o, he wrote while in serving a two year sentence.

In 1962 he traveled to Morocco and joined the Angola liberation movement, MPLA, where he was elected leader.

Later he published another collection of poetry titled, Sacred Hope, (Sagrada Esperança) which was published in 1974 by Tanzania's President Nyerere.

Agostino Neto served as Angola’s president until he died on September 10, 1979 at the age of 56, while in Moscow while undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer.

Today, I will share with you his poetry, speeches, and also a couple of poems dedicated to him by others in the diaspora.

We Shall Return

To the houses, to our crops,
to the beaches, to our fields
we shall return

To our lands
Red with coffee
White with cotton
Green with maize fields
we shall return

To our mines of diamonds
Gold, copper, oil
we shall return

To our rivers, our lakes
our mountains, our forests
we will return

To the shade of the mulemba
To our traditions
To the rhythms and bonfires
we shall return

To the marimba and the quissange
to our carnival
we shall return

To our beautiful Angolan homeland
our land, our mother
we shall return

We shall return
to liberated Angola
independent Angola.

From Sacred Hope – Poems by Agostinho Neto, published by the Angolan Writers Union, 1986, sponsored by the National Bank of Angola. Translated to English by Marga Holness.1

Written after a pan-African conference in Bamako

Bamako!2

There, where the dripping truth on the leaf’s brilliance
unites with the freshness of men
like strong roots beneath the warm surface of the soil
, and where love and future grow
, fertilized in the generosity of the Niger River,
shaded by the immensity of the Congo,
at the whim of the African breeze of hearts.

Bamako!
There life is born
and grows
and develops within us impatient fires of kindness.

Bamako!
There are our arms,
there our voices resound,
there the hopeful gleam of our eyes
transforms immensely into an irrepressible force
of friendship
, drying the tears shed for centuries
in enslaved Africa of other days,
revitalizing the nourishing juice of the fruit
, the aroma of the earth
where the sun disenchants giant Kilimanjaros
under the blue sky of peace.

Bamako!
Living fruit of Africa
, a future germinated in the living arteries of Africa.
There, hope became tree
and river and beast and earth;
there, hope triumphs, friendship
in the elegance of the palm tree and in the black skin of men.

Bamako!
There we conquer death
and the fruit grows – it grows within us
in the irresistible force of nature and of life
alive with us in Bamako.

1954
in “Sagrada Esperança”, Agostinho Neto, Complete Poetic Works, page 783

WESTERN CIVILIZATION

Tin sheets nailed to poles

fixed in the earth

make a house

Rags complete

the intimate landscape

The sun penetrating cracks

awaken each occupant

Afterwards twelve hours of slaving work

Break stone

cart stone

in the sun

in the rain break stone

cart stone old age comes early

a coarse mat in the dark nights

suffices for him to die

grateful

and of hunger.

Liberty in our eyes

the sound in our ears

of avid hands upon the skin of the drum

in the accelerated and clear rhythm

from the congos Kalahari mountain light

infinite red bonfires our violated fields

spiritual harmony of the tam-tam voices

in the clear rhythm of Africa

Thus

The way of the stars

along the agile curve of the gazelles' throat

for the harmony of the world.

-by Agostinho Neto (President of MPLA)4

“ I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies”

Dedicated to the Poet Agostinho Neto,

President of The People’s Republic of Angola: 1976

1

I will no longer lightly walk behind

a one of you who fear me:

Be afraid.

I plan to give you reasons for your jumpy fits

and facial tics

I will not walk politely on the pavements anymore

and this is dedicated in particular

to those who hear my footsteps

or the insubstantial rattling of my grocery

cart

then turn around

see me

and hurry on

away from this impressive terror I must be:

I plan to blossom bloody on an afternoon

surrounded by my comrades singing

terrible revenge in merciless

accelerating

rhythms

But

I have watched a blind man studying his face.

I have set the table in the evening and sat down

to eat the news.

Regularly

I have gone to sleep.

There is no one to forgive me.

The dead do not give a damn.

I live like a lover

who drops her dime into the phone

just as the subway shakes into the station

wasting her message

canceling the question of her call:

fulminating or forgetful but late

and always after the fact that could save or

condemn me

I must become the action of my fate.

2

How many of my brothers and my sisters

will they kill

before I teach myself

retaliation?

Shall we pick a number?

South Africa for instance:

do we agree that more than ten thousand

in less than a year but that less than

five thousand slaughtered in more than six

months will

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ME?

I must become a menace to my enemies.

3

And if I

if I ever let you slide

who should be extirpated from my universe

who should be cauterized from earth

completely

(law and order jerkoffs of the first the

terrorist degree)

then let my body fail my soul

in its bedeviled lecheries

And if I

if I ever let love go

because the hatred and the whisperings

become a phantom dictate I o-

bey in lieu of impulse and realities

(the blossoming flamingos of my

wild mimosa trees)

then let love freeze me

out.

I must become

I must become a menace to my enemies.

from Things That I Do in the Dark (1977)

and from Directed by Desire. The Collected Poems of June Jordan.

Copyright 2005 by the June M. Jordan Literary Estate Trust

AGOSTINHO NETO

by Chinua Achebe

Agostinho, were you no more
Than the middle one favored by fortune
In children’s riddle; Kwame
Striding ahead to accost
Demons; behind you a laggard third
As yet unnamed, of twisted fingers?

No! Your secure strides
Were hard earned. Your feet
Learned their fierce balance
In violent slopes of humiliation;
Your delicate hands, patiently
Groomed for finest incisions,
Were commandeered brusquely to kill,
Your gentle voice to battle-cry.

Perhaps your family and friends
Knew a merry flash cracking the gloom
We see in pictures but I prefer
And will keep that sorrowful legend.
For I have seen how
Half a millennium of alien rape
And murder can stamp a smile
On the vacant face of the fool,
The sinister grin of Africa’s idiot-kings
Who oversee in obscene palaces of gold
The butchery of their own people.

Neto, I sing your passing, I,
Timid requisitioner of your vast
Armory’s most congenial supply.
What shall I sing? A dirge answering
The gloom? No, I will sing tearful songs
Of joy; I will celebrate
The man who rode a trinity
Of awesome fates to the cause
Of our trampled race!
Thou Healer, Soldier and Poet!