Cliffs that rise a thousand feet
Without a break,
Lake that stretches a hundred miles
Without a wave,
Sands that are white through all the year,
Without a stain,
Pine-tree woods, winter and summer
Ever-green,
Streams that for ever flow and flow
Without a pause,
Trees that for twenty thousand years
Your vows have kept,
You have suddenly healed the pain of a traveller’s heart,
And moved his brush to write a new song.
Tochukwu Ezebube is a passionate poet and founder of Poem Collections. With a deep love for African verse and a commitment to sharing diverse poetic voices, Tochukwu curates a rich tapestry of poems that celebrate the beauty of words from Africa and around the world. Join him on this poetic journey at Poem Collections, where the magic of language unfolds.
Hail thou, the world’s salvation, Hail Jesus kind and sweet, Before thy Rood in gratitude I bow and clasp thy feet. Before thy holy altar My soul bows down to thee, I know that thou art present now, Be merciful to me. Those feet, which cruel iron Has pierced full deep and sore; Lord,…
Background of the poet Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali, (born 1940, Vryheid, Natal, South Africa), South African poet who wrote in English and Zulu and whose work drew deeply upon the immediate experience of life in the Johannesburg township of Soweto. Mtshali worked as a messenger before his first collection of poems, Sounds of a Cowhide Drum (1971), won the Olive…
“All God’s Chillun” by Edward Kamau Braithwaite is a poem that reflects the period of Indian indentureship as labourers on the field. It also emphasizes on the Idians’ bitter experience of inferiority and racial discrimination whilst labouring on the field for the Englishman . Apart from the inferiority complex and racial discrimination, their labourious service…
Leopold Sedar Senghor is a poet, philosopher and scholar. He is one of the eldest and most prominent living persons associated with African poetry and culture. Born in 1906, Senghor was educated in Dakar, Senegal and Paris, France where he made history as first West African to graduate from the Sorbornne and teach in French…
Once only by the garden gate Our lips we joined and parted. I must fulfil an empty fate And travel the uncharted. Hail and farewell! I must arise, Leave here the fatted cattle, And paint on foreign lands and skies My Odyssey of battle. The untented Kosmos my abode, I…
They say the guinea-fowl lays her treasureWhere only she can find it.Akosua ‘Nowa is a gunea-fowl:Go tell her, red ant upon the tree. I met Akosua ‘Nowa this morning;I greeted: Akosua, how is your treasure?She looked me slowly up and down,She sneered: The man is not yet here who’ll find it! Akosua ‘Nowa has touched…
