Nyenasuma

Leaving never is a more beautiful landscape than when the foot treads the first acre of an unknown path. We discover ourselves under the rain and the phosphorus, paying attention to the language of the wind. The smell of the days of sunshine mottles our face, never to disappear. Nyenasuma is etched inside of us, while we turn round to see our footsteps carved in the sand.

We seek wisdom in the salt of the lakes, and the nostalgia of the shrubs catches up with us. We walk, because we do not want to do anything else. Because we cannot do anything else. Because we do not know what else to do. A stride cannot be etched into stone.

We cross entire fields of women-trees erected by centuries of doom. These are evil mothers, but they are bloodthirsty only because they have been cursed. The child suckling on their breasts does not leave any footprint in the snow, for the spider is posted at the fringe of the mountains. As for us, we do nothing but take note of this natural phenomenon, filling our gourds with fistfuls of snowflakes. Here is the nyenasuma whom some call, with restraint and a slow gaze, hiba hati.

There is no frolicking here, for the falcon is on the lookout, and sharpens its gaze on the edge of the mountains. Twining round balls of hair which it mistook for the branches of a dwarf beech.

Once, one of these women-trees was a young woman. She used to wear a green felt coat, buttoned-up to the chin. She was carrying one of these very discreet leather handbags. Every time a man sat in front of her in the train, she used to present the oval of her face only. Averted her eyes she always did, slowly. Even though she smiled. Ever so faintly, right about enough for the men to notice it, but not enough to carve a dimple in her cheeks. Yes, perhaps was she sad.

There existed a sky devoid of aerial lines, but it is nowhere to be found now. At present we have to leave, regardless of what appears in these grey skies, grey with frost. We must leave this field of silence before it becomes our sojourn. Our fate is to leave the beings to theirs. And to walk as far as our heart allows it, before it turns to stone so that it would best dwell somewhere it belongs, because it will have elected this place in full knowledge of what is elsewhere, which will henceforth bear the proud name of 'home'. Our gaze will, then, shine with the things discovered, without hesitation, even if, ultimately, it will, with an infinite slowness, stumble upon the footprints in the sand and the trail of the falcon.

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Nyenasuma: sadness, nostalgia (literally 'slow gaze') in Bambara (language spoken in Mali, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire/Ivory Coast, Gambia, Mauritania, Senegal)

Here is one of the paintings which, among others, inspired this poem:

Giovanni Segantini, Le Cattive Madri (The Evil Mothers), 1894