number 22
December 1992

News & Letters

Text to come when someone volunteers to type this up
Just a few items are here.

Olinga
You embrace the earth again
As once you surely must have done
With a small round of clay
Between your fingers and your thumb -
Kneading, shaping it, a constant symbol
Of what, called upon to perform,
You set yourself to accomplish.

You embraced the Earth
And I (I tell it now remembering)
Have heard your name mentioned
By those who met you, those who did not;
And though I did not, I am one of the passengers
On a certain train
That met you at a thousand stations
You had come to stop at -
Here agian to take that round of clay
Shape it to order and pattern
Unearthing, as you worked, what lay conceealed
Then moved on to the next stop
To begin again with potters hands
A kernel to open.
I try to pierce now beyond this sudden death,
Remove my numbness to see as you would have
The meaning and its implication:
And I remember what the African said:
“This is my life and I’ve lived it
“I want no other.”
You embrace the earth again.

Martyn Burke, Belgium.

*In the memory of Hand of the Cause of God, Mr Enoch Olinga who was murdered in 1979.

Reprinted from the U.S. produced, 1984 anthology "My Calamity is My Providence" compiled by Tahirih Khodadoust Foroughi.