African Easter

by Abioseh Nicol (1924-1994)

Good Friday

The Wounded Christ:

I am not your God

if you have not denied me once, twice,

if I have not heard you complaining,

or doubting my existence.

I am not your Love,

if you have not rejected me often.

For what then am I worth to you

if you are always sinless.

Pace these sandy corridors of time,

turn again and live for me your youth, listening

to the gently falling rain, the distant cock crow

then proceed once more to deny

that I had a part in your being.  Say

that I am an invention to keep you held

always in thralldom.  That I was

the avant-garde of your disintegration.

After me, the stone jars of cheap gin, ornamental 

glass beads, the punitive expeditions, your colonial status,

I have heard it all before; hide your face,

bury it, for fear that finding me, you may find peace.

For in this hour when the dying night lingers

unwilling to surrender its waking darkness

over your face and fevered brow, my torn fingers

will stray bringing such comfort

as may claim your doubting heart.

Easter Eve

The African Priest:

I have sat down by the waterside

watching the grey river pulling away.

I have listened me with willing ears

to your vesper bells across the fields.

Come close to me, God, do not keep away,

I walk towards you but you are too far,

Please try and meet me here halfway,

because you are my all, my all.

What are you, Negro, Lebanese or Jew,

Flemish, Italian, Indian, Greek?

I know within my heart exactly what you are – 

What we would like to be, but never are.

The warm blood sticks to your whipped shoulders

(Drink this in remembrance of me).

Only when the whirling throngs have raised red weals

on our complacent bodies, then we remember you.

Change our salty tears of brown remorse

into your flowing blood, it tastes the same.

(Oh, River Niger, you too have come from far away),

Fill my uplifted silver calabash

with your sacrificial wine.

And I, your least novitiate, will sip,

with my thick lips, your ancient memory

So God the Father who art above,

Christ His Son, our only love,

Holy Ghost, eternal Dove,

make me a goodly man.

Easter Morning

The African Intellectual:

Ding dong bell

Pussy’s in the well.

Another day…

Sleep leaves my opening eyes slowly

unwillingly like a true lover.

But this day is different.

The lonely matin bells

cut across the thin morning mist,

the glinting dew on the green grass,

the cool pink light before the heat of day,

the sudden punctual dawn of tropic skies, 

before the muezzin begins to cry, 

before the pagan drums begin to beat.

Easter morning.

But still for me

the great rock remains unrolled.

within my wet dark tomb

wounded peace remains embalmed,

the pricking thorns still yet my crown.

Easter morning.

Where are my ancestral spirits now?

I have forgotten for many harvests 

to moisten the warm earth

with poured libations.

Where are you now, O Shango?

two headed, powerful

man and woman, hermaphrodite

holding your quivering thunderbolts

with quiet savage malice;

brooding over your domain,

Africa, Cuba, Haiti, Brazil,

slavery of mind is unabolished.

Always wanting to punish, never to love.

I have turned away from you

to One who stands

watching His dying dispossessed Son 

shouting in Aramaic agony

watching the white Picasso dove

hovering above the Palestinian stream

watching and waiting, sometimes

to punish, always to love.

Sleep confuses my tired mind

still the bell rings

I must up and away.

I am a good Churchman, now.

Broadminded, which means past caring

whether High or Low.

The priest may hold the chalice,

or give it to me.  It depends

on where he trained.  I only mind

that he wipes the wet rim

not to spread dental germs.

A tenth of my goods

I give to the poor

through income tax.

Easter morning.

Yet you Christ are always there.

You are the many-faceted crystal 

of our desires and hopes,

behind the smoke-screen of incense, 

concealed in mumbled European tongues

of worship and of praise.

In the thick dusty verbiage

of centuries of committees

of ecumenical councils.

You yet remain revealed

to those who seek you.

It is I, you say.

You remain in the sepulcher

of my brown body.

Christ is risen, Christ is risen!

You were not dead.

It was just that we

could not see clearly enough.

We can push out the rock from the inside.

You can come out now.

You see we want to share you

with our masters, because

you really are unique.

The great muddy river Niger, 

picks up the rising equatorial sun,

changing itself by slow degrees

into thick flowing molten gold.