Gerard Sekoto, In Memorium: 1913 - 1993 Parts One and Two
[Poem read at Sekoto’s inhumation ceremony at the Neuilly-sur-Marne-93 Cemetery, near Paris. Channel 4 in London recorded the reading as they did the funeral rites in the presence of his close relatives come from afar for the nonce and based their documentary - as far as I can tell - on my lead cover article on the South African self-taught painter and musician Gérard SEKOTO, published in The Journal of Comparative Poietics, Vol. 2 (Paris), 1993. Both the article and the poem were re-published in my book on “poietics/la poïétique”, entitled: Poietics: Disquisitions on the Art of Creation. Allahabad: Cyberwit.net, 2008, 214p. There ensued a general scramble for his canvasses at the Maison des Artistes where he was lodged in his declining years, and even the sketches he gave me for publication disappeared from my studio.]
I
Would that anger subside
anger fed on pride
pride of I against You
who is right: I not YOU
meum et tuum
Some words hastily released on the verge of angry pride
Tear from us a part of our flesh a part of our cells
Leaving us lesser men forever pitted against the I in You
forever wanting to be right
I above You
You may not - yes, now I know you didn't - have meant it
Your words were stony arrows sunk in the mud of my hurt
splitting even before they found the unintended target
There may yet have lingered then a little bit of the malign in you
That ultimate grace-saver in your embattled loneliness
I didn't stop to think
I had to show you I was hurt
I didn't realise your hurt was legendary
already formed and contorted in the aeons of darkness
each in our indelible separateness
Your age your despair your self-abandonment
in the gorge of medicines
in the crises that felled you
careering through terrifying electric storms
leaving you year after year worsted
wiping duster-strokes of your memory clean
I didn't stop to think
II
Your demise is the passing of an age
is the passing of a people's pain
unrequited
In your veins you take with you a hundred years
of hurts and slings
of dismemberment and mindlessness
of lost chances anguish and despair
though
driven into your lonesome corner
upright against the inroads of a Rhodes
or the pitted power of Buthelesis
finding in the milling Seine
in the plucky rhythms of an ebony-and-ivory keyboard
in the hidden skeins of your eyes
a pulse
beating with the heart of downtrodden generations
the infinitely pulsing look of defiance
that ultimate refusal of defeat
© T.Wignesan, March 29, 1993 [from the collection: back to background material, 1993] Pub. in Journal of Comparative Poietics, Vol. II (1993), Paris & Poietics: Disquisitions on the Art of Creation. Allahabad: Cyberwit.net, 2008.
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