Sacraments
By Aneb Kgositsile
They say our old uncles and aunties
would fashion their survival medicines,
roots and herbs, poems and songs,
circle dances to touch the Spirit for sustenance.
Geniuses, they were, in the arts of endurance, resilience, hope.
Thus, daily they cultivated the cotton, cane, tobacco, rice,
whatever crop; withstood the beatings and abuse,
looked forward to collards and cornbread, the communion meal
of daily resurrection; to the cool darkness of evening,
and the relief of dreams.
But there would come a day when all such knowledges
no longer served. Home hung so heavy on their hearts,
so bulging, so full and bursting,
they had only to raise their arms and they were aloft,
levitated by the longing for Africa and freedom.
There they would hang for a moment,
African saints, dissolving into air and sunlight.
“Chirren,” they would whisper as they ascended,
“today we flyin back home. You gon be alright. We see afta you.”
Memories remained
of their grey, wiry beards,
their sunburnt, overworked hands and arms,
their indigo-stained fingers and palms,
their squinting eyes-so-tortured-by-the-sun,
their thread-bare trousers and tissue-thin, faded skirts,
the smell of tobacco in their shirts.
Memories
of how to fix broken tools,
cure tumors, summon joy in feasts and festivity,
mend broken hearts;
how to wait, how to be patient,
how to revive, how to love, how to laugh;
how to engender justice, how to attain peace.
Those risen saints left us chirren these holy sacraments of endurance.
They guide us from the place they called glory,
keep us on the righteous path,
till the world we call freedom someday will come.
Aneb Kgositsile (Gloria House, Ph.D.) Professor Emerita, University of Michigan-Dearborn and Assoc. Professor Emerita, Wayne State University, is a life-long freedom worker, essayist, poet and recipient of the Kresge Eminent Artist Award 2019.
