Colors of Africa by Eda Alp

A collection of poems.

Colors of Africa

GREEN

Green suits you, Africa.

I lose myself in that deep vibrant shade of yours.

Your green is the type of green that transports me through universes.

Your green means power.

It is overwhelming yet peaceful.

Knowing that this luxuriant shade of green has been here before humanity.

When I walk amongst the chlorophylls of the wild plants,

I finally grasp the concept of infinity.

The first life is the grass I step upon,

The last life is nowhere near.

Your green symbolises infinity, peace, eternity of life.

Your wild green in your most perilous cliffs,

Is a soothing green of ever lasting peace.

Is that why I keep loving you so, Africa?

Do you disguise your danger in hypnotising shades of green,

A green that gives me nothing but a sense of peace?

Will you take my life away by making me feel the most alive I have ever been?

Luring me into your deadly savannahs, your steep mountains, for that magnificent shade,

A green that envelops me whole,

A green that flows through my eyes,

Pours over my body like a soft cold water,

Streams through my arms like electricity,

Makes me see lives I haven’t experienced,

Makes me lose my humanity as I feel green,

Green with you,

Prosper and deep,

Ever-knowing you,

Africa.

ORANGE

Africa, how do you really feel about orange?

If its in the skies, with the fierce glow of a fire, you try to get rid of it in a deceiving haste.

If its on your earth, it’s eternal, muddy, a melange of the savannah ground with its yellow herbs.

Orange, fierce and intense on your fleeting sunsets,

Infinite on your ancient grounds.

When your sun sinks low, it paints the sky with strokes of tangerine and apricot.

It blends with the dark blues of the ascending darkness of African nights.

It leaves, slowly, an orange of a blazing hell,

Fiery, captivating, terrifyingly beautiful.

Yet, when your oranges lay with the acacia trees of the savannah,

A spectacular sight of dark orange and tall silhouettes of wild African trees,

Your orange becomes nothing but love,

Deep love of beauty that you and I share.

You color your predictable greens with a fire, bloody, intense, rich.

When the day ends, Africa, you need passion,

You need action on these beautifully monotone landscapes of green, brown and blue.

So you throw buckets of exotic paints,

You disrupt everything furiously,

To create the beauty of an infinity of colors dancing with each other.

The orange and the pink kiss,

Live a love story at each sunset.

Lovers of your continent join them,

Azibo kissing Hasina under the sun of Kenya,

Nangula hugging her dog Nala under the sun of Namibia.

The greens fade into the blues, which all fade into darkness,

And all that remains is that last little glimmer of orange,

Burning out like a candle slowly running out of air.

That last spark of orange is a mere dot,

A dot with all the power of the sun.

Its intensity is fascinating,

But too ephemeral to admire.

Just as you stare into it,

It vanishes under the horizon,

Making place for the stars, galaxies and suns

We watch under the pure, untouched, illuminated African night sky.

And Africa said,

May there be night.

BLACK

Darkness on my land is whole.

It is a darkness that you cannot imagine.

When night ascends, you are but a mere insect,

You must swiftly take shelter before I envelop you whole.

My darkness is not the absence of light:

It is the darkness of all that exists,

A darkness so intense, so dense,

Because when darkness ascends,

Any animal, any human, any tree, any energy of Africa

Unites into the darkness,

Darkness that shan’t cease.

My darkness down on my earth is dense and terrifying,

Where it blinds even my swiftest animals.

On my African night, everyone is blind,

On my African nights, ears listen attentively,

For any crack, or any roar.

Small insects roam around those human’s beds,

Hippos roam around grazing, their heavy bodies crackling the ground beneath them.

Lions move delicately, silently, feeling the vibrations of their preys through their big, royal paws.

Silence governs, yet life still talks and crackles and whispers.

A lizard runs on its light little feet to seek refuge under the bush.

A panther takes the first lethal bite out of a gazelle’s neck,

The warm blood trickles down the tree.

A lion’s cub squeals faintly under the bright moon,

As hunger torments its little body.

The humans turn in their beds,

Their half asleep minds alert at the fear of predators penetrating their fragile little tents.

In the sky, darkness does not have a place.

In the sky, millions of stars and galaxies shine bright upon my continent.

My untouched sky is my pride,

It is as dark as possible, so that my own lights can luminate it in the wild way that they do.

In my sky, my animals observe stars dead,

Dead for centuries yet still shining bright,

As they are so many thousands of light years away,

That their darkness has not reached our eyes yet.

In my sky, my humans observe emptiness,

The vast emptiness between their earth and the far-away galaxies home to stardust, violet planets, and a deafening silence.

My nights silence all life on my grounds,

To allow the luminous silence of worlds beyond ours.

Eda Alp