Translated from the French by Connie Voisine and the Author

Image used for representation.

Ode To The Organ Mountains

                                          To Richard Greenfield

It’s here in New Mexico
that the earth of this country
held out to me its naked body hoisted
on whispered beats
from these peaks of Isis
Organ Mountains
marvelous crests
gigantic
dazzling

this relief is a sight indeed
music that captivates us approaching.
Wilful charmer, earth
which the naked eye cannot grasp
before me, and behind me
this plain stretching endlessly
to the edge of the sun
setting himself, dragging his feet
under the spell of this instrument

visibly grandiose
with an arrogant delicacy
stripped bare.
It’s here in New Mexico
at the foot of these Isis peaks
that my heart found
its soft spot for America.

Words Here, Like Hello, Are Made Of Snow

                            “All the sad beauty of a calm morning
                              where I find myself alone,
                              depleted,
                              a way like any another
                              of consoling a heart
                              to the rhythm of the music”
                                                          —Songs of Sand, Ayi Dossavi

Words here carry the scent of snow,
mapping a memorial on my face
unexpectedly morose, staring at me.
Don’t you know any warm words,
like Vogan^[1],
where burning pork sauce journeys from
your nostrils down the backs of your hands to fingers
crooked like a question mark?
I invoke Vogan to inhabit the snow-words

because the commas that separate them from me
are also drunk on Fela^[2] and
carry the taste of sunshine on their wings—
dziŋkpakpa wele wele
dziŋkpakpa wele wele^[3]—
but butterfly wings don’t survive
snowy weather,
nor its pitiless white teeth
which have devoured the flowers even before the season,

Sculpted mores and tempers,
desires and dislikes,
assaulted bodies and hopes
where some feet return in search of balance.
A cold powder whitens what we call
the American dream. I summon the cities
with Fela’s heat to inhabit these snow-words.

He Dances And Gets Excited In Collection Baskets 

        Reference to collections
        —Connie Voisine, Cathedral of the North
        —Kwame Dawes, City of Bones

The cathedral of the north
adorned with verses
and greenbacks
is well suited to the city of bones
mimicked in my dream.
Here unlike elsewhere
the churches are
overflowing with loneliness
and cobwebs,

their walkways bordered
by flower beds
yellowed with absence.
It’s like god
is too short on time
to accept
our offerings or he feels
too sad to dance to the song of
slave chains, 

reaching through our bodies which are
cathedrals, and museums too,
a shelter for all these objects
charged with clinking and heliheli
which pokes this god out of his silence.
Elsewhere he’s been made a book, where he dances
and gets excited in collection baskets. 

Notes: 

[1] Vogan is a town northeast of Lomé, known for its Friday market, which is one of the largest pork sauce and vodu markets in West Africa.
[2] Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti, also known as Abami Eda, was a Nigerian musician, bandleader, composer, political activist, and Pan-Africanist. He is regarded as the pioneer of Afrobeat, a Nigerian music genre that combines West African music with American funk and jazz.
[3] Butterfly, fly, fly.

Also, read a Bengali fiction by Joya Mitra, translated into English by Kausambi Patra, and published in The Antonym:

From The Depth Of Darkness— Joya Mitra

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