Max Pierre

FIRE AND WATER IN LOVE

(For Caroline Williams)

The crowd is in delight
for water has destroyed fire
Everybody is at peace
listening to moonlight strings
everybody is relaxing
for water killed fire
Water swallowed fire
Water and fire
before life rose in the air
before God took a deep breath
were in love
Water is a man fire is a woman
together they are one
Water is fire fire is water
everything is linked to the earth
You are me I am you we are one
How can I tell the children
that through fire water and us
and through everything
there is only one LOVE

PACKING THE MIND

(For Tashira Eugene)

Lightings of storms
sparkles of nature seen thru the eyes of my heart
And the arts will always be
the most powerful light
In this world I am
and will always be
as human or as dust
as a lamb or as a pelican
I want to wheeze for all
and all to breathe for me
The sheet will carry my universe
through the cosmos
through myself and yourself
I see the shadow-light
of the words
between my fingers
And my drunken lamps
are burning their last flames
Love-shadow
from my spinning heart
is building a cathedral
I am a soul traveler
let me pack myself
and visit eternity

Full With Love

(for Tatianah Jean-Louis)

Full with love
Like the moon up the sky
is full with light
we should be full with love
The moon is
embracing all the earth
thy heart could have been full
wIth love
and beat for all the other hearts
Look at the orchids
caressed by the starlight
they are opening with joy
and will be blown in petals
Spring is full with vegetation
and trees and flowers
are living with laughter
Heart full with sunset
like the sea
is full with fish
full with sea shells
with crabs and water
Full with love
like the moon
is full with bubbles
and with light
lighting all the earth.

FIGHTING

(For Wilfrid Simon)

The waltz is slowing down
between what is true
and what is off beam
Our existence is on fire
We are losing ourselves
I am in the circle of a fight
to keep my soul
in this iron world
Everyday I come around
with my loneliness
with the resonance on my body
of shots and explosives
I am living a metal life
The existence refuses me
the key to the door of the flame
Behind me the world
is about to pass away
The waltz is slowing down
My heart his howling
howling and howling
I am in the circle of a fight

Clementine Madiya Faik-Nzuji

A poet from Zaire

Home of the Nile River, the mystery of the pyramids, and the power of the tribes, Africa has a very hot sunrise, and the mighty sun is close to this land. The voices from the African continent resonate on all the earth, from Kenya to America. The African people are energized everyday with burly solar energy that creates pigmentation and a lot of melanin; and the two combine, invigorate, and provide them with vigor, sensitivity, vivid emotions, and passions. Although the long struggle for freedom on the land and in the diaspora is so pertinent, the African spirit remains strong. This people cannot stop talking, lamenting, singing and dancing and rolling the drum. The drum is a sacred percussion; it is at the basis of the African spiritual rites. Zaire, located in central Africa, has a rich oral patrimony that contains a lot of folk tales, history, and poetry. It took time and hard work for authors, from Lokole Antoine-Roger to Clementine Madiya Faik-Nzuji, and to Kama Kamanda, to collect and to understand the variations of the stories inherit from the sum of ethnos that exist in Zaire.

Clementine Madiya Faik-Nzuji was born in Zaire, in the city of Tshofa on January 21 st , 1944, and educated in Lovanium and in Paris where she did her Ph.D. She taught oral literatures and African stylistics at the National University of Zaire from 1972 until 1978 and then taught the same subjects at the University of Niamey between 1978 and 1980. She is actually a professor at the Catholic University of Louvain, in Belgium, teaching linguistics, oral literatures and African cultures. Known as being a great supporter of cultural and literary movements, she was in the 1960's, activating a literary group called ‘La pleade du Congo' (Plead of Congo). A linguist, a novelist, a short story writer, a specialist and a theoretician of Zaire's oral and traditional literature, the author's entire work is a significant contribution to the elaboration of a theory for indigenous/time-honored literature in Central Africa. Among the books that Clementine Madiya Faik-Nzuji published, are Murmures, 1967 (Murmurs, 1967), Le temps des amants, 1969 (A time for lovers 1969), Gestes interrompus, 1976 (Broken deed, 1976), Lenga et autres contes d'inspiration traditionelle, 1976 (Lenga and other tales of traditional inspiration, 1976). She is a prolific researcher in the area of general Bantu linguistics, including the anthroponomy and semantics of oral literatures and the study of symbols, tattoos, and scarifications. Her multiple scientific publications are largely in the field of oral literatures, African figurative systems and associations between cultures. In connection with this work, she participated in numerous conferences, as well as running seminars on these subjects.

As a researcher in traditional literature, customary sources influence her poetry. From Zaire, Clementine Madiya Faik- Nzuji is part of a drizzle of great writers such as Lokole Antoine-Roger, Valentin Yves Mudimbe, Mukala Kadima Nzuji, Georges Ngal. Despite of many movements and currents in literature around the globe, poetry in Zaire stays intact. Even the negritude movement did not leave its influence on this writing. The poetry of Clementine Madiya Faik Nzuji is innocent and intimate, and so are poems by many poets of her generation. There, among the poets in Zaire, the poetic/prosaism of the poems is flagrant; and in commonplace expression, great emotions overflow as clear as the African soil, as limpid as its rivers.

As recognition, the writer has received a prize at the African Languages of Central Africa Short Story Competition organized by the Royal Overseas Science Academy (Belgium, 1987. She has also received first prize for her poetry in the President L.S. Senghor Literary Competition (Congo, 1969).

Sentimental, especially in ‘Le temps des amants' (A time for lovers), the poems by Clementine Madiya Fayik Nzuji are the echoes from her attachment with native Zaire. The poems also illustrate the solitude that human creates in human, the one that Reiner Maria Rilke wrote about in ‘Letters to a young poet', the same solitude that Ray Charles, the African American blues singer sang, especially with the song ‘Georgia in my mind'. Her poetry, profound and easy to read, carries the imprint of past anguishes; it is a flame where nature and passion merge. Clementine Madiya Faik Nzuji was born on a continent where the sun is closer to the earth. Her poems, between the warmth from the sun and the coldness from human solitude, reveal hope for a better tomorrow with happiness based on a true affection.

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Cover Design: Joseph McNair