From the collection Kindred
Are you really colorless, and
I the multiplicities of color?
Then how do you rivet me
In a rapture of enchantments?
Frighten not your eagerness
To rest in my tukul**; twist
Your tongue in imitation of mine,
As mimicry leads to mastery.
You will learn to speak
And live like I do, so long as love binds.
Do not mind my kin, they
Forget that a woman has no tribe.
She makes her home with her man, and
If blessed, she is crowned
In burial with his ancestors.
They say you are colorless, and
Worse: you do not know our ways.
Crown me, dear colorless, as you wish.
Honor my people with tethering cattle
In their byres. May their joy overflow!
Observe our ways
That you may soften their hearts,
So they may greet you with endearment and
Not in the detached deference
Accorded strangers.
Do not mind my beloved people;
They fear for me as a woman.
I may be mistreated in your land,
Faraway, across rivers they cannot even name.
Worse, they fear you may desert me
With half-colored children –
Leaving my kin without honor
And me full of shame.
Never mind, I tell my people –
The colorless rivets me
In a rapture of enchantments;
I am filled with colorful visions
Of a life enriched and horizons stretched.
Love, after all, is colorless and
Multiplicities of color at the same time.
I will frighten not my eagerness
To rest in your home. I will twist
My tongue in imitation of yours,
As mimicry leads to mastery.
I will learn to speak
And live like you do, so long as love binds.
** Tukul: a traditional, cone-shaped round hut with a thatched roof.
Apuk Ayuel Mayen 