Celebration of a life

You were born a stranger in the motherland[1].
An immigrant amongst settlers, never quite clean enough;
Caught between ease and unease[2], unsettled[3]
You stole tickeys from yourself to fling to the other you[4].

Your poetry almost left you. Your tragic hero[5]
Crouched mindless, half blinded, at journey’s end[6]
Flung between the land of عثمان بن أرطغرل[7]
And mad voices twisted into this dark heartland[8].

Blerrie Griek grew into foreign words; they framed
Your urge to anger and love[9]. When home words
Slipped behind bars[10], rage and pity struck locks free
To speak and shout for strangers in their motherland[11].

---

[1] Humanity originated in Africa, yet Africa is still the dark continent.  Dangerous, barbaric, how can Africa be our ancestral home?

[2] The material ease of Whites, the unease when we become aware that we are benefiting from someone else’s suffering. The dis-ease of black people in Apartheid South Africa.

[3] Neither a settler nor an indigenous person. A difficult, unsettled identity.

[4] Jungian? Which identity is the shadow? The rich white or the poor black child?

[5] Refers to Greek theatre as well as Homer, the blind poet, father of the Greek language.  More literally, a biological father, an immigrant, crushed by the easy greedy words of injustice.

[6] Odysseus also eventually  came to the end of his journey.

[7] Osman Gazi, founder of the Ottoman Empire, came from Anatolia.

[8] South Africa, the twisted, mad heart of darkness

[9] Language defines much of our identity. English is dominant culturally and linguistically, a coloniser of the mind. Yet you used this foreign language to frame dissenting arguments, to rage against the status quo, and express compassion for the excluded.

[10] The loss or imprisonment of the mother tongue

[11]A strong sense of right and wrong makes you speak out, in whatever language you have, to protect those who are idenfied as strangers in their own land: Khoisan, Australian aboriginals, original Americans, Catholic Irish,  Apartheid black South Africans, Palestinians, the poor.  The list is long.

A birthday celebration

You were born a stranger in the motherland[1].

An immigrant amongst settlers, never quite clean enough;

Caught between ease and unease[2], unsettled[3]

You stole tickeys from yourself to fling to the other you[4].

Your poetry almost left you. Your tragic hero[5]

Crouched mindless, half blinded, at journey’s end[6]

Flung between the land of عثمان بن أرطغرل[7]

And mad voices twisted into this dark heartland[8].

Blerrie Griek grew into foreign words; they framed

Your urge to anger and love[9]. When home words

Slipped behind bars[10], rage and pity struck locks free

To speak and shout for strangers in their motherland[11].

---

[1] Humanity originated in Africa, yet Africa is still the dark continent. Dangerous, barbaric, how can Africa be our ancestral home?

[2] The material ease of Whites, the unease when we become aware that we are benefiting from someone else’s suffering. The dis-ease of black people in Apartheid South Africa.

[3] Neither a settler nor an indigenous person. A difficult, unsettled identity.

[4] Jungian? Which identity is the shadow? The rich white or the poor black child?

[5] Refers to Greek theatre as well as Homer, the blind poet, father of the Greek language. More literally, a biological father, an immigrant, crushed by the easy greedy words of injustice.

[6] Odysseus also eventually came to the end of his journey.

[7] Osman Gazi, founder of the Ottoman Empire, came from Anatolia.

[8] South Africa, the twisted, mad heart of darkness

[9] Language defines much of our identity. English is dominant culturally and linguistically, a coloniser of the mind. Yet you used this foreign language to frame dissenting arguments, to rage against the status quo, and express compassion for the excluded.

[10] The loss or imprisonment of the mother tongue

[11]A strong sense of right and wrong makes you speak out, in whatever language you have, to protect those who are idenfied as strangers in their own land: Khoisan, Australian aboriginals, original Americans, Catholic Irish, Apartheid black South Africans, Palestinians, the poor. The list is long.