Listen to Things
More often than Beings
Hear the voice of fire
Hear the voice of water
Listen in the wind
To the sigh of the bush
This is the ancestors breathing
Those who are dead are not ever gone
They are in the darkness that grows lighter
And in the darkness that grows darker
The dead are not down in the earth
They are in the trembling of the trees
In the groaning of the woods
In the water that runs
In the water that sleeps
They are in the hut,
They are in the crowd
The dead are not dead.
Sep 27, 2016
Sep 27, 2016 at 10:03 PM UTC
Listen to Things
More often than Beings
Hear the voice of fire
Hear the voice of water
Listen in the wind
To the sigh of the bush
This is the ancestors breathing
Those who are dead are not ever gone
They are in the darkness that grows lighter
And in the darkness that grows darker
The dead are not down in the earth
They are in the trembling of the trees
In the groaning of the woods
In the water that runs
In the water that sleeps
They are in the hut,
They are in the crowd
The dead are not dead.
An excerpt by Birago Diop
which can be found in the African Philosophy Reader (Coetzee & Roux 2003: 723)
