Sunday 9 June 2013

Mumbue Sonnet

By John Gallas (UK)

 

‘the full man knows not the hungry, or the rider the walker’

 

I’m walkin in my feet to Mumbue.

The sun comes up. I’m crackling like a chicken.

Whoa, I’m happy. Somethin’s comin, kickin

clouds of yeller grit behin me. Hey!

Stop !  It don’t. Who cares ? It whirls away.

I seen inside the flyin cotton curtain –

Business sat with Care. My toes are hurtin.

Whoa, I got to walk another day.

How quick they fly to worry. What I got

the other end improves with ev’ry gleam

along the long horizon, fat an’ hot.

Whyever hurry ? Happiness will keep,

an’ sorrow passes. Sleep, my baby, sleep.

 


Mumbue Sonnet won third prize in the African Prisons Project Poetry Competition 2013 


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