​

Lines Composed beside Nkruma Hall,

On contemplating departure from Dar es Salaam, June 3, 2009

by LM B Noudehou

I will not return. I will say goodbye to this beauty

as I have to others before: I will laugh and greet

a new face as I have others before.

Rocoroibo, Tlalpan, Mitla, Ixmiquilpan, El Paso, 

Lenexa, New Fairfield, Waltham, Beijing, St. Paul, 

St. Petersburg, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Manassas, Port Elizabeth, 

Rockville, Libreville, Kigali, Dar es Salaam….

​

Dar, my beloved, the sun rises above 

the edge of your sea to light dhows, ships, 

palms, and cars winding into your city.  

My eyes take joy in Coconuts bowing along 

the beach, the Neem, unremarkable but ready to heal, 

the Ashok guarding the streets, their backs straight, 

the Baobabs, otherworldly, like elephants, surprising 

at each turn, the Frangipani blooming fragrance, 

the twined Figs offering sun-flecked shade.  

The sun fires the hills beyond the city, 

illuminating students walking to class or seated 

'neath trees, bent over books. The translucent green 

of the leaves is luminous in the morning light and the sky 

glints with Tanzanite depths of blue. Sublime.  

The evening moon rises to light anchored 

ships and people, tacking rapidly like dhows  

pointed home. But my heart is not anchored.

In seeing your beauty, I am already closing my eyes.

In adding your worth, I am already counting my loss:

Sun, sea, beach, trees, streets,

People…

​                 William tells me that memories of this place

will walk with me and sustain me when I go.

If today I observe carefully, if I open my senses

to the sea breeze, whispering leaves, and students

under the trees, then their sublimity will tomorrow

provide tranquil restoration, harmony, joy, 

as they appear before the inner eye,

nourish my heart and fuel acts of kindness.

Not so, I say.

​                        Memory works otherwise.

My heart is nourished by yet unresolved grief.

Listen. “The still, sad music of humanity”

within me sings of loss and leaving, never

the joy of a harmony beyond song or the belonging 

which celebrates a sacred fusion with an ancient land

and its people. Never.  

​                                     My heart sings Rocoroibo.

Beloved, the sun rises above the ridge

of your mountain to illuminate fields of maize, new 

green, across the valley. As the sun rises,

its beams waterfall down the hills to the creek

murmuring its drills around immense boulders;

the beams slide up the banks to the low stone wall, 

dew covered grass, my father’s adobe house,

the pine shingled roof, the dappled forest 

behind. In response, the smoke of morning fires

and tortillas rises both from the house across 

the valley and ours. Bells jingle, the dogs 

stretch, a girl follows goats to pasture. Thirty 

years ago, I left this valley. I said 

goodbye to Hulali, matriarch of the valley, wielder 

of the plow, guardian of goats, strength, and knowledge…

goodbye to mossy stones, to red Paint-brush

flowering in the shale, to cactus on stone outcrops…

goodbye to Madrones with white-lined red bark, 

to creek Willows, to big-dipper Oaks, to weeping 

Pines, to stately, pitchy Ponderosas… to earth, 

stones, boulders, mountains. We hiked out

of the valley. My father took a photo of me, smiling,

sunlight gilding my braids, my fingers sifting 

through the pine needles, the valley behind.  

Behind. I knew: This is the photo of me 

never returning. Did you know, beloved, did you?

I knew, and yet I left.

​                                      Does anyone return?

Bring him back, my in-laws direct the future, 

not through spoken words but through discussion

of other deaths, other bodies. The ancestors

await in Ouidah . No matter where death has cut 

the soul’s umbilical cord. There is no other 

home, there is no other resting place.  

Rest. Let us rest in Samachique say my mother’s parents.  

Decades after they have left the valley of their ideals, 

their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren gather 

their ashes, carry urns across borders by airplane, car, 

and foot to the Sierra, to the top of a hill overlooking 

the valley and their house above the creek and shower

their ashes into the mountain wind. Are they happy 

now, resting in the arms of their beloved, the valley

they so longed for?

​                                 William returned to his River Wye, 

at least once, if not again. I never 

return. I fear return. The valley will have changed; 

I will have changed. No hope for return, no hope 

for residence, no hope for respite. My place of stasis

will never be the evident land of my present.

Always an exile, always I long for the valley

of my childhood – my Sierra Madre. I will say to my sons, 

let me rest in Rocoroibo. Take my ashes, borrow an ox, 

and plough my body into the clods. I will join forces

with goat droppings to renew the grass and the maize;

never will I leave a place again. Never 

say goodbye my beauty, my beloved, goodbye. Never.

And in that moment, the grief will pass, the past

will be present: I will be of the earth, I will be the earth.

​

And so, with the sun in my eyes, I contemplate

an expected departure whose date is not yet fixed…. 

​

with thanks to William Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour July 13, 1798.”

​William Wordsworth was interested in the relationship between the poet and the landscape and between the poet and rural peoples. I never paid much attention to his works until I took up a post at the University of Dar es Salaam, where the Department of Literature asked me to teach British Romantic poetry. And so, as I thought about my relationship with the lands and peoples of Tanzania, I had the occasional conversation with Mr. Wordsworth. This is one of those conversations.