Cheikh Tidiane Gaye

MY LAND

At dawn

I dress with your smell

and while the stars escape the day

I wake up under your shadow

embracing the mystery of your warmth.

Offering myself to your hands

I walk on your lungs

I devour the wind to fly into your eyes

To sing your sweet persimmon scent.

At dawn

I extract the ink of your spirits

from the magic tree, I sculpt the pen

to paint your soul

and my innocent voice sings your songs.

At dawn

A voice told you:

land without voices

voices that do not know how to dig the well of melodies

melodies that don’t rhyme with words

words without perfume,

this land does not know how to plant letters,

out of tune words

sounds without flames:

flame, smoke and only darkness.

Land that cannot count

I realize that it repudiates arithmetic

story that does not shine. (from “Ode Nascente”, 2009)

Cheikh Tidiane Gaye from Senegal does not want to be labeled as a poet of migration. We would rather define him as a borderline poet between decolonization and integration, between past and future. Perhaps it is the present that is close to him.

Born in Senegal in 1971, he has published texts in prose and poetry, including “The oath”, “Mery albina princess”, “The song of the Djali”, “Alphabetic curves”, “Rime embraced”, “Ode nascente”, “Take what you want but leave me my black skin.” He is openly inspired by Leopold Sèdar Senghor, first president of Senegal and French-speaking poet, who, together with the Antillean Aimè Cesaire, was the ideologue of negritude. By negritude we mean the rediscovery of African culture, of its peculiar characteristics, such as the sense of rhythm and the strength of sentiment. The black people go in search of themselves, their roots, their specificity, in the aftermath of the diaspora that made them stateless, wandering or not well adapted.

“Hearts, hands, feet beat,

all feet, hands, hearts beat

the smile of men who welcome the true word,

word born in pain

word that is rooted in the concrete of our being,

word enhanced by euphoria,

word carved in the bark of millenary baobabs,

word from the aurorae letters cut at the sunset of tears,

word that smiles:

negritude. “

But in Tidiane Gaye this uniqueness is projected into the future and used as a bridge for the creation of a new syncretic society which, at its base, has only the principles of humanity and universalism. As Adriana Pedicini points out, Tidiane Gaye is a humanist, he places man and his word within a Vitruvian circle, he considers interculturality a powerful means of integration, enrichment and overcoming of barriers. At the base of everything is the Italian language, used as a unifying tool that regenerates itself into something new, regardless of all the knowledge stratified over the centuries, and evolves, enriching itself with expressions that are the fruit of other cultures and other experiences. This may or may not be liked — it may also surprise us that Tidiane Gaye admits that he does not know Pinocchio or writes Ungheretti instead of Ungaretti — but it is nonetheless the expression of a modern intercultural movement, the result of exportation and globalization, to which we must get used and which we can no longer ignore.

Through this fusion, this melting pot of cultures and languages, we reach, according to the optimistic and hopeful vision of Tidiane Gaye, an encounter with otherness, an understanding of the other, authentic brotherhood, love.

The poet himself takes care of this almost messianic task, who, declaring “I am not a poet” and “I am not a prophet”, in reality assumes both roles. It will be he, as ferryman, bard, aedo or, better, djali, to take on this luminous task: to unite the hearts of men through the poetic word, to bring them to that place where differences are value and don’t clash. In short, to the sacred place of fraternity.

I AM NOT A POET

I leave early in the morning

my thatched house

my sandals, goat leather

I carry on the wind, the invisible ropes

in the maze of plural sounds

I sing my village, the land of my ancestors.

When I sing, it is bread that I offer

to the ear that listens to me

to the tongue that applauds me and to the hands

who speak to me and praise me.

I am not a poet

my Alexandrian is an orphan of hemistiches

my prose, dry grass to light up the nameless nights

dark and curious.

I am not a poet

when I sing my words penetrate hearts,

I guess the words in the bushes

sources of my fertile thoughts

who provide milk and cheese.

I cut my syllables in the fire of purity,

I am the angel of the masks, invisible at night

in the darkness of words

that trace the glorious songs of the warriors.

I am not a poet,

I will be. (From Il canto del Djali, 2007)

Gaye sings about Africa, understood as a continent and not as a single country of origin. In fact, he repeatedly states that he wants to eliminate the borders, mere conventions drawn up at the table. His Africa is everything south of the Sahara, from which, however, a wind blows that burns and suffocates but also caresses and forgives. Africa is smell, taste, density, bright color. It is earthly and tangible things — and it is the most beautiful parts, the most vibrant poems — like the millet, the baobab, the kora, a musical instrument made of pumpkin and leather. “In my country the blood of lions floods the wells / the skill of women is measured in the width of their hands”.

MY AFRICA

I will lie down on your chest

and embrace me in your fresh arms,

you will give me your bread and your rice

only your black beauty will be enough for me

when at noon

the bright light of your skin

will cover my anxiety

offering me the shadow, sweetness of your smile

fresh singing;

moon of my dreams

sing me and cuddle my soul.

Stop me all

your Sahara wind

your beach as soft as strawberry

stop me all

but not the drums on the clear moon

when listening to the man with the white beard,

illuminating the dull smiles

in the fall of weak tongues,

I will be the elusive voice

the sonorous mouth of a land

where hope falls

like steps.

I will lie down under your feet

your gaze will not be enough for me;

lift me up with your long cool arms

host me in your lair, wet nest;

at dawn we will smile at the world

because this earth is always standing. (From Canto del Djali, 2007)

Africa, in this case, is edenic regret, a welcoming mother conceived with yearning nostalgia. But Africa is also ships loaded with slaves, barges braving the waves in the dark, reception centers full of astonished faces, it is the island of Lampedusa begged, invoked, prayed.

The land Tidiane Gaye talks about is not only that of his origin but, by extension, all the nations that suffer like his have suffered, first of all the tormented Palestine. Where there is a lost people who suffer, there is the homeland of Tidiane Gaye and, through his poetry, through the language that he brings together, the possibility is offered to heal the wounds, to let love flow, to unite the past to the present building the future, reconnecting the living to the dead. “It will bring tolerance to my beach”.

But Africa is also wonderful women, exalted with accents from the Song of Solomon, beloved women and mothers, sacred as donai in their earthly physicality, synecdoche of an entire earth.

RAMATA

Your name is nourishing sap

your feet, enclosure of your verses

your body a life

your verses fill the chalices

and flood the lakes of beauty

your quick body

is the guest of my nights,

the moon is hiding

to offer me the warmth of your skin

mirror of your memory,

reflection of your tongue.

Your body is a symphony

a syllable, a house,

your body is lips

the shape of your mouth a kiss

your brow smooth and free,

your white teeth

they feed on the smile of the sun

in the sail of the winds

and in the night of the moons

your mouth is hearing and lyric

your braids, painting and poetry

your gait, the epic journey of your people. (From Ode Nascente, 2009)

TO MY MOTHER

I have not lost you, I dreamed of you

your shadow, my guardian, savior of my steps

you said to me: sleep near my heart suckled by my breast.

Your wisdom is passed down

I grew up to overcome men’s fears.

I remember, you carried me on your soft back

blending the ears of millet

I was raised to cultivate the strength of men.

You, my mother, my singer, sang at night to fall asleep

I grew up to save you from the nightmare.

You, my teacher, taught me the first letters of the alphabet

I grew up to teach the language to man.

Mother, you are my keeper invulnerable to the cries of hyenas

come near and don’t abandon me

life has split the umbilical cord

but the heart is united with you forever.

The price of suffering is to smile in the morning

listen to your voice

escape from your fears,

I sing to you when the sun moves away from the clouds

when the moon awakens

at night, when the stars dance

I’ll dance on tiptoe

from my eyes I will look at you, I will tell you to forgive me

and I will thank you for giving birth to me.

Here is my mother in the dream

that she replied with a smile on her lips:

My son, adore your mother and father

I am the mirror for you. (From Canto del Djali, 2007)

Adriana Pedicini also points out linguistic syncretism, the use of neologisms and references to the Wolof language, and I add the contrast between recurring words, like waves that overlap continuously, returning without ever being the same: for example honey and viper. Honey is connected to the origins, to the earth, to the language, the viper is what hurts, deceives, exploits, deportes.

It is difficult to judge Tidiane Gaye’s poetry with our meter because it has the rhythms, the enjambements, the accents of the production of his country. The prosody shows us an elastic verse, sometimes narrow, sometimes elongated until it fills the whole sheet and takes on the connotations of prose. The word is a means of expression but also an end, it has a cognitive value, it discovers the secret meaning of things. The Word creates, has power over matter and spirit, the word of the griot, of the cantor, gives life to the new religion that has man at its center, the new humanism that compensates and heals.

TAM-TAM

Hands drowned in salt water

I bow in front of the tree and recite the verses of my grandfather.

And I will say:

Spirit, cut this wood in the purity of milk

the sounds of the wind, the waves of the sea,

I meditate on the invisible voice of the heart

I accompany the voice of the griots,

the tongue of the saltigue becomes the memory of the camel

you fall during the king’s death

the birth of the child

and … slowly the joy of the people.

Tam-tam

in your salt skin

I bow in front of the tree and recite the verses of my grandfather.

And I will say:

I want to hear your rhythms to adore the pink flower

open the eyes of heaven by dancing with the beautiful pearls

on summer evenings under the full moon

I want to feel the memory of the starry night

to the silent cries of hyenas and leopards

the verb that says “Drink the word to enlighten the heart”

the flowering plant

the collapsing mountain

the bending hill

the lakes that empty the belly of the crocodile. (From Il canto del Djali, 2007)