Poet of the Week from Madagascar: Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo

Poet of the Week from Madagascar: Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo

As someone who has always been drawn to the French Romantic poets, Rabearivelo struck a chord with me.  As African poets, go he's an obscure despite laying claim to the unofficial title as "Africa's first modern poet."
   He died by suicide, in 1937 having lived his entire life on what was then the French pastoral colony of Madagascar (he was prohibited by the authorities from leaving the island). 

He kind of looks like Tiger Woods, n'est-ce pas?













9


The secret hives are aligned
near the lianas of heaven,
among the luminous nests.


Gather nectar there, bees of my thoughts,
little bees winged with sound
within the pregnant cloud of silence;
laden yourself with resin
perfumed with stars and wind:
we will seal all the gaps
communicating with the tumult of life.


Laden yourself also with stellar pollen
for the prairies of the earth;
and tomorrow, when there will be wreathed
the wild roses of my poems,
we will have celestial rose hips
and sidereal seeds.


Pomegranate, lines 9-13

Its taste will be sweeter,
because it was pregnant with desire
And with fearful love and scented blossoms -
Pregnant by the love sun.

Other links of Rabearivelo:

http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/cm/africana/rabieri.htm
http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A48767
http://creativequotations.com/one/1358.htm

FUUO Past Poets of the Week:
http://fuuo.blogspot.com/2012/05/african-poets-of-week-compilation.html