1 | Page

in prose of bogolan. circa 1945.

les Salons de la France d'Outre-Mer
& Echoes of War.

ten poems

i ask that you

BURY ME IN MUD
CLOTH
written by

amma birago

bury me in mudcloth
when god created the world bogolan was there.
amma birago
the woman and then the hunter became.

and before god

it is war. it is war and we mourn:
while women bleed, men bloodbath.

2 | Page

salvador dal. the burning giraffe/lighted giraffe

bury me in mudcloth
when god created the world bogolan was there.
amma birago
the woman and then the hunter became.

and before god

it is war. it is war and we mourn:
while women bleed, men bloodbath.

3 | Page
Are the women then themselves? When they did not wage war
and did not go to it but it comes to them? When war
like trauma is the process of alchemy?

in prose of bogolan, circa 1945.

les Salons de la France d'Outre-Mer
& Echoes of war.

bastille day
and bumper harvest.
it is bastille day. bumper harvest.
the men from france harvest artifacts,
landscape, humans, facts and the old religion.
vultures descend on the sculptures of Komo,
the sculptures and masks of wood and also of metal,
of chalk marks and wood ash, kolowi, mud and river.
bogolan is ripe for harvest. it is the flag and the land,
womb ancestral taken in word, deed and photograph.
at their loins, distaff archivists and chroniclers know
bogolan is present for blood at birth and labor of child,
blood at excision, first moon, deflowering and harvest.

In 1937, in Bambara country, in a town called Bldougou, a

young girl of twelve years begins her rites of passage into
womanhood. After three years, in the month before her
completion all the men are taken away to war in Algeria and
beyond; a forced conscription by the French colonial
administration. In the years prior, Frenchmen from the Office du
Niger came to live amongst them for months harvesting
photographs of the landscape and the people, harvesting tons of
masks and artifacts from all of the towns along the Niger for the
first Salon de la France d'Outre-Mer which took place in 1935 and
the second in 1940. Soon the Second World War, the slogan trois
couleurs, un drapeau, un empire emerged and took hold of their
bury me in mudcloth
when god created the world bogolan was there.
amma birago
the woman and then the hunter became.

and before god

it is war. it is war and we mourn:
while women bleed, men bloodbath.

4 | Page

world. Then came the forced conscription to join the war effort. All
the native men, young, of marriageable age and husbands, are
taken away to the war.

La France, ma patrie!
Trois couleurs, un drapeau, un empire.

The native men join the corps of colonial infantrymen and

skirmishers; the Troupes Coloniales, the Senegalese brigade,
theTirailleurs Sngalais. They are taken away to Algeria and
north to southern France, to Vichy and also to ammunition
factories in Bourges and to where the fighting needs men and
more men, as soon as they turned fifteen, they are drafted from
the towns and villages all along the Niger River.
A young girls process and passage into womanhood grinds to a
halt. For five years, in the absence of the men, life goes on and in
the songs and stories of the womenfolk, she observes, she
wonders, she takes note and she will remember.

Bury me in mudcloth. In prose of bogolan.

It is the account, in poetry prose form and in journal fashion, of a
young Bambara woman of marriageable age who, like many
others, waited for the men; her fianc who went to war for the
French but never returned: And the men, the veterans who
returned but were not themselves.
Are the women then themselves? When they did not wage war
and did not go to it but it comes to them? When war like trauma is
the process of alchemy?

bury me in mudcloth
when god created the world bogolan was there.
amma birago
the woman and then the hunter became.

and before god

it is war. it is war and we mourn:
while women bleed, men bloodbath.

5 | Page

the grounds on which i stand

contain my blood and also my flesh. also the green on it and the waters
in the bark, stems and leaves, for spirit, life and medicine.
with a sickle in hand i ask for my freedom:
bury me in mudcloth.
i have earned the grounds
on which i stand.

index
title

of poem

page

1. Bury me in mudcloth
6
2. Flagships and Selfridges
3. Savon de sodani
8
4. Solar panels and sacrifice unsung
5. Conjur women are owners of birds
6. A shape shifting woman
7. Fulani pirogue on the river
8. Bride price and hired hands
9. Habitat for humanity
10. Bamana keys find their grooves

bury me in mudcloth
when god created the world bogolan was there.
amma birago
the woman and then the hunter became.

7
9
10
11
12
13
14
15

and before god

it is war. it is war and we mourn:
while women bleed, men bloodbath.

6 | Page

1.

Bury me in mudcloth

In dark corners living man membrane resounds

and voices hobbling in chorus hail conjur woman:
Bury me in twice silent and now quashed history;
silent cloth, homestead thread, mill and gagged,
doused evergreen light, living woman membrane,
natures alchemy, green mineral, oxide mud and
mug shots of rogue sons Turk for husbandry.
Memories of Bamana landscapes bygone,
oases Bldougou before alchemy voodoo
to rogue sons of Turk code for spirits distilling up,
blowing ivory fauna horn, glass and petri dish.
Rive gauche of the Niger. Living membrane
canvas for velvet alchemy noble in mud disguise
recalls Turks by silken ropes of trans-Siberia
and Cartage plundering bodies of thought yoked
to arabesque harems and desert mines of brine;
silent cloth, homestead thread, mill and gagged.
Living man membrane and veterans palimpsest.
Woman executing words by mud indelible ink,
skillful hands bleeding penmanship very adroit,
golden sun, lime, green foliage and bark of tree.
bury me in mudcloth
when god created the world bogolan was there.
amma birago
the woman and then the hunter became.

and before god

it is war. it is war and we mourn:
while women bleed, men bloodbath.

7 | Page

Word ink, blobs dark and lonely verb for proverb

wielding boyhood blade bilakoro. Bilakoro blade.
Skillful hands, scales weighing choruses; the baby,
and the bath water: choruses, the one mugged
and the other of returnees huddled in dark corners
hailing conjur woman; bury me in mudcloth,
bury me in twice silent and now quashed history.
bilakoro the uncircumcised or a boy. literally old cache sex.

2.

Flagships and Selfridges

When the men with burlap sacks came to Bldougou,

they came in from the horizon bearing promises legerdemain;
the seductive coups of their abattoirs, mercy a fist throated
and without rites of passage their ships stomached artifacts.
Bogolan is open secret. Open house.
Bogolan is open city: the Turks have been through.
The life givers and holders of secrets mute,
the men near broken have lost their charm.
Bogolan is word not spoken, word not broken, word out in the open.
Palms and archives secret expose tenets of alchemy, natures element;
mud, sap and bark of trees, mineral oxidized and redox:
The womb worn the inside on the out, girdle over garment.
The raiders and exploiters are here:
The resisters in womb-tunic of hunters await.
We stand our ground. The grounds on which we stand
contain our blood and also our flesh. Also the green on it and the waters
in the bark, stems and leaves, for spirit, life and medicine.
With sickles in hand we ask for our freedom: Bury us in mudcloth.
bury me in mudcloth
when god created the world bogolan was there.
amma birago
the woman and then the hunter became.

and before god

it is war. it is war and we mourn:
while women bleed, men bloodbath.

8 | Page

We have earned the grounds

on which we stand.
When the men with burlap sacks came to Bamana country,
it is said they came in from Sikasso and Koulikoro, Kolokani country.
They came in the harmattan and they came in the rains and harvested
mineral, stone, tree and spirit of the tree, the life, song and medicine;
Our insides exhumed and bound for flagships and Selfridges.

3.

Savon de sodani

Tannic waters green gone ochre configuring patterns from void,

word where there was none bursting seams with silent proverbs
fat like the barrel of the European gun, the musketry of Old Turk.
Bogolan archives the sun by sap turned ochre, brown and black.
The calabashes of our grandmothers and their mothers mothers
track the annual activity of the sun. Archived and no palimpsest,
looms of cloth silenced by history while tannic waters tossed out
whiten the loins of the sun, its mustard yellow gone pale, come
leaves and stems of wolo conjugating mud, a judicious harvest,
earmarked, conserved, unassumingly track the course of the sun;
in-house ecology, cloth greenhouse, alchemy ink and the women,
on straw mats kraaling the wide and dry mouths of the calabashes,
work surfaces of history once finimougou now muddied by design.
The women mapping terrain, their skillful hands on golden cloth
canvas secured on calabash circumference; silent conference calls
on the mastery of the art of resist technique. The resisters are here;
ochre of m'peku, gilded selfridges palimpsest with white history,
bury me in mudcloth
when god created the world bogolan was there.
amma birago
the woman and then the hunter became.

and before god

it is war. it is war and we mourn:
while women bleed, men bloodbath.

9 | Page

the ploy of savon de sodani, technology groundnuts electrolytes,

caustic soda, lye and alkali from bran of millet in fired cauldrons.
Alchemized mud turns ink, dye baths of leaves and barks of trees,
the golden yellow of the ngallama, griffs by the bitter mordant
of lovers and rivals decked north of here, war in the white mans
country of cold, frost and bite, while here the home fires burning:
in the house of calabash flowers Mauritanian women hold henna;
in Bamana dreams of cakes of salt pressed down, shaken together.

savon de sodani caustic soda. . finimougou white cotton cloth not yet dyed or processed. mpeku
wood used to fashion masks and also from which ochre or yellow is obtained for dyeing cloth .... wolo
a tree with leaves, stems and bark from which yellow is extracted as dye and fixative.

4.

Solar panels and sacrifice unsung

Coups de griff, inkpot and bleeding pen; texts bleeding hysteria

in the skilled act. Girls of marriageable age minus right of way,
in holding pattern, bogolan now forokoni at their loins, they lie
in wait ambushing time nave of fecundity and toddling to prime.
The old women, barren, happily deaf, unaware of the men gone
to foreign lands, at war: The men of marriageable age, husbands,
mineral, blood and semen enchained to foreign wars and whores,
artillery large caliber, loose cannons miserable the morning after,
while mothers and grandmothers, barren, sit at altars guided by
life-giving skills of Braille on archives like the pedicure henna.
The daughters and their daughters daughters on new grounds,
their hands to the pedals of husbandry, also industry, the looms,
the songs of absent weaver men, meditative statues, eyes affixed
on shuttle shutter speed weaving history, finimougou rising white,
white and palimpsest. Childs arms for mama and birth canals.
bury me in mudcloth
when god created the world bogolan was there.
amma birago
the woman and then the hunter became.

and before god

it is war. it is war and we mourn:
while women bleed, men bloodbath.

10 | P a g e

Child for trauma, or bridegroom championing the circuits of life

following till swallow the moon full and the sun at zenith, while
archives of solar panels finimougou, bogolan redox and oxidizing
limonites, savon de sodani, home-made soda ash, mystic alkali.
Weaver women decked with husbandry, empty house and wives,
cottage industry, homespun yarns woven cloth craving mordant,
cloth bleeding by Turkish moon crescents while Calvary crosses
European once again crusade crossroads and history unarchived.
Young women barefoot, sullen in forokoni like Van Gogh cuboids
on liminoid grounds and at their feet menstrual blood paramount,
also pleasurable earth-quaking bits of their private parts catalyst
on silver platter. Lonesome hills, landscape the delicacy of desert,
sacrifice unsung while coups de griff loom large against the sun.

finimougou white cotton cloth not yet dyed or processed.

forokoni traditional Bamana hunters tunic

5.

Conjur women are owners of birds

The desert is approaching fast and the hornbills having lost their homes
they show up equipped with their carcasses. A long-tailed black hornbill,
sculptured white atop her head, chewing stick, she sits gravely awaiting
the return of her sons from the war. Their corpses forecast and castaway,
her wide berth will receive them or dream of the luxuries of seven sons,
pallbearers, French war uniforms, insignia, the twenty-one gun salute,
the chief mourners burial grounds: Brave soldier, she died in her boots.
The desert is approaching fast and the hornbills having lost their homes
they show up equipped with their carcasses. Girls of marriageable age
like the red-billed and short-tailed hornbills, depressed and all ears to
turtled-backed and ochre ground, piles of bogolan, ordered, stashed
in world war chests not yet delivered, they wait fallow day in day out,
and without fly by night or day suitor, heirlooms left unguarded, pout.
bury me in mudcloth
when god created the world bogolan was there.
amma birago
the woman and then the hunter became.

and before god

it is war. it is war and we mourn:
while women bleed, men bloodbath.

11 | P a g e

The desert is approaching fast and the hornbills having lost their homes
they show up equipped with their carcasses. Two sisters and their mother,
their brothers and father absentia, deviant, they turn to serpentine motif;
the one to the earth diagonal and left, the other to the right circumspect,
their mothers gaze upwards, vector towards Nyama, bird primordial,
and all three conjur women, their heels to the dry-backed ground, mime
voodoo in the vortex of serpentine and dizzying spells once called time.
The desert is approaching fast and the hornbills having lost their homes
they show up equipped with their carcasses. Ghosts of veterans hanker
the fences, broken and entered, voids of blue-black and portions white,
figure narratives of spirits longing and long gone extend potent seeds
in vivo, womb cultivation, true north in the wake of foreign title deeds.

nyama life-force, assorted spirits, anime.

6.

A shape shifting woman

Rive gauche of the Niger, a new woman washes up and out.

Not the spirit of Old Woman or gazelle but beautiful woman.
The men gone to the war, the old men retire under the palms,
the old women beady eyed, their spirits wide awake, on guard.
There is a shape shifting woman in flashes of palpable form,
living coils of copper from her upper arm down to her wrists
penultimate, curve and disappear as veins conjuring hands.
There is a shape shifting woman frequenting the homesteads.
The tree leaves signal at harmattan by dripping liquid kolowi.
Bumper harvest of fonio, our sickles harvest dry leafy brooms
as her train finimougou and golden in the early evening light,
her limbs, the prized twin stalks of the gilded millet, walk tall.
bury me in mudcloth
when god created the world bogolan was there.
amma birago
the woman and then the hunter became.

and before god

it is war. it is war and we mourn:
while women bleed, men bloodbath.

12 | P a g e

Word goes and comes around; the war stands year in year out.
The men gone to the war, the women hold down the fort;
brown-cheeked, yellow-billed, black-casqued and expectant
congregations under a conjurs gaze. Guinea fowls, their hens
assemble when river-angel descends war-torn skies and lands.
Peacock-proud, rapidly their eyes begging bowls outstretched,
their palms clasped in dire need or cupped for talisman fecund.
Rive gauche of the Niger, a new woman washes up and out.
Not the spirit of Old Woman or gazelle but beautiful woman.
The men gone to the war, conjur woman holds us spellbound;
womb-starving expectant birds of the same feather flock to her
at the makeshift market of life and stock, the troubled water,
talisman and their pantries grinning mouths filled with game,
granaries open once again expecting rain burst at their seams,
women by a conjurs gaze soon conceive and pounding grain
provoke labor, barricading the horrors of fiches d'tat uncivil.

fonio annual grass, used to be cultivated by men but soon restricted largely to women.
kolowi cowry fiches d'tat uncivil fiches d'tat civil is birth certificate/vital records held by the state.

7.

Fulani pirogue on the river

The millet stalks delightful in the wind, the flighty little birds,
little red and yellow winged birds nubile, full of play and life.
Our Fulani pirogue on the river and I around and about him,
the singing birds atop his cattle, their colorful wings clipped.
Fulani pirogue and he takes his cattle to pasture before noon.
By midafternoon the cattle eat their way to the hand-dug wells
where at the stock market, their droppings, golden and green
and the women husbandmen, mature enough to desire rivals,
their hearts throbbing, they ogle fresh golden green produce,
golden sun, green pastures, stocks, currencies, commodities.
Women husbandmen turned livestock brokers, their wives
the cattle and on rotation, shifting cultivation. With sisterly
bury me in mudcloth
when god created the world bogolan was there.
amma birago
the woman and then the hunter became.

and before god

it is war. it is war and we mourn:
while women bleed, men bloodbath.

13 | P a g e

keen unblinking eyes, friendly-rivals watching one another,

calculating whose farm or crop needs watering by the rains,
by real money; fresh dung, golden green and very precious.
Women husbandmen unaware of the coming ramrod borders,
dictates of the railroading communaut financire d'afrique,
veterans sudden faux chefs, tax collectors on puppet-strings,
the women, their daughters fly-trapped and forced-ripened
as those well past prime bypassed, and under lock and key
bogolan for betrothals and thrilling ululation mourning cloth.
Wars overseas wage on, marriages backlog. Sudden news;
Veterans. Hoary-headed and shell-shocked desiccated trees:
Broken men, broken French, their split minds and tongues,
chameleon, their stipends sticky tongues missile and fly-trap
young girls, then bidding the mature and dark arms of death,
rival of life, magical, its sure-footed call sweeter than graves,
than the wild honey or the hornbills roomy and broken song.
Fulani pirogue on the river, he is unlike the veterans,
the singing birds atop his cattle, their wings clipped.

8.

Bride price and hired hands

Trading indigo to greener pastures and bride price at Bldougou

before Kolokani, illegitimate son of Tyi Wara contracts hard work.
His eyes and his lonesome songs calling me mother of his future,
his metaphors nomad, metaphors enigma couple Bamana proverbs,
wishful thinking land by grant or grandfather, deed of his father;
the land and the water under it, wells, farmhands and wives four,
his wealth in cattle, hard currency and lonesome welcome songs
far removed, loaded metaphors and methods saltlicks on my mind.
Fulani prays facing east making appearances not infidel Bamana.
Five times a day, Fulani piping hot about Tyi Waras long horns,
wet dreams of legitimate status Bamana and possible prtendant,
and songs of Bamana women caressing the loins of the limp sun.
bury me in mudcloth
when god created the world bogolan was there.
amma birago
the woman and then the hunter became.

and before god

it is war. it is war and we mourn:
while women bleed, men bloodbath.

14 | P a g e

Fulanis green thumb, his favorite tree is diagonal to our foroba.

His most favorite near the dasiri, sacred groves in mystical oasis,
mystical oasis enabling sacrifice. Disallowed, Fulani, undeterred,
full pursuit of dreams full blown furumuso, terra firma. Harratin;
his singular kwoorisongo commissions consignments of bogolan.
Fulani has eyes for my breasts. My eyes pick up his desert songs
and my perky girl dogs prick their ears on engorged larynx radio,
voice box like trunks, caravans promising bride price and indigo,
foreign and maternal cloth and tongue. Voice, girth, stokes desire,
bidding contracts matrimonial, poking the moon for fathers door.
Foreign men at arms length but his arms full and bumper harvest,
his tall neck and my perky girl dogs prick their ears and look out.
Before dusk, deg, his present, half of his meal wrapped in manly
but not mother tongue, his gifts, missives colorful, kaleidoscope
and golden monologues of dutiful homage. At night, envelopes
self-addressed, packed clandestine and returned warm to sender,
his rod and staff before him, behind him gourds of milk at dawn,
carafes of the inky tea of dah at noon and soon bumper harvests.
dah ... the hibiscus dasiri the sacred grove of trees, a communal cult linking several homesteads deg a fermented
millet gruel with sour milk eaten mid-afternoon fogofogo a tree on an exhausted piece of land, a struggling and
depreciating investment foroba the compound of the extended family literally the big field. furumuso a bride, used
to describe a woman on her first marriage. harratin the slave caste of the Maure / Mauritanian nomads. kwoorisongo
part payment of a dowry, literally the price of cotton prtendant suitor. Tyi Wara a half antelope, half human figure
honored at festivals of planting and harvest represents the mythos of the discovery of agriculture.

9.

Habitat for humanity

Tyi Wara is most powerful, stronger than a hundred men,

stronger than the lion but denuded and devoid of habitat.
Supernatural being and farming animal, otherworldly halves;
half animal and half man, Mousso Koroni is his mother,
his water into wine is flowering corn and millet in gravel country.
Royal, the donkey and the mule, bumper harvest laborer in disguise,
equally yoked to hopes of headdress of the blacksmiths of Kok,
headdress hidden in the rafters, soothed by the smoke of the forge
and the molten heat of iron on anvil, new ash and the butter of shea:
His goods and services hard currency once kolowi now liquidated;
An outsider yearns marriage, leverage and secret society.
bury me in mudcloth
when god created the world bogolan was there.
amma birago
the woman and then the hunter became.

and before god

it is war. it is war and we mourn:
while women bleed, men bloodbath.

15 | P a g e

Tyi Wara desires habitat for humanity so Fulani exhibits husbandry.

Champion farmer exhibits wealth and intentions of marriage.
Fulani will have Bamana rights, true Bamana rights to land.
He is disallowed the Komo so he will perform Tyi Wara.
My fianc was of the tigui koum, of the class of masters.
My fianc was governor of the tye kura, and soon tye koroba,
master of the law and order but at war on liminoid grounds,
without rites of passage, in trenches cold and unguarded, broken.
Fulani disallowed the Komo, he will perform Tyi Wara.
Women choruses open and endorse both absent and foreign arms.
Choruses full throttle anime the weeks before the rains and soon
otherworldly masks periscope-like descend and come alive.
Champion farmer, Masoloba wants you; come plough these fields.
Tyi Waras own, son of his very loins, new member of the royals,
Zantegeba, he with the large paws will rise up and stand before you,
seven incisions blossoming scarifications on the sky of your brow.
You, our Fulani, will be son of the Bamana. For you vestal virgins,
thresholds of brides and proud banners of prudery the morning after.

mousso koroni sky goddess, her husband the snake Masoloba, an important female ancestor tigui koum, masters of
the Komo, secret society or rites of passage for men. tye koroba advisors of the secret society for men tye kura class of
initiates to the secret society for men. zantegeba a headdress signifying the old baboon or lion featured during
masquerades.

10.

Bamana keys find their grooves

Bamana keys do find their grooves

in foreign hands unlocking device.
I am finimougou pure and white,
and the swallow is faros go-between.
On my Fulani like a kings crown,
caps of splendid white domes
stiff like the corpses of doves
fashion-wrought and flanked by lapels,
the resplendent jaws of mari crocodiles.
bury me in mudcloth
when god created the world bogolan was there.
amma birago
the woman and then the hunter became.

and before god

it is war. it is war and we mourn:
while women bleed, men bloodbath.

16 | P a g e

My Fulani builds me a compound

and orders locks of Zougoum
and behind terracotta posts
and thresholds herbs fecund.
Locks by craftsmen of Zougoum,
the outer courtyard and the other
innermost where he comes to me,
an herb of goodwill disabling the malevolent,
locks like receptacles shafted with potent ease,
receptacles finimougou, self-made bogolan.
My Fulani become musotigui,
an adept agama riding the stalks at noon:
Bumper harvest, locks of Zougoum and Fulani steed
pendulated on green-purple plumes tending brown.
Millet unlike the guinea corn, the corn, their stalks,
their ears, purple, red ochre, metallic gold and green
and I unlike millet, like corn,
colorful, the unpredictable swallow.
Bamana keys do find their grooves
in foreign hands unlocking device
and I faros go-between.

faro the spirit of water, moisture and rain, often at the depths of rivers. the swallow is the messenger of faro
mari /crocodile totem/protective spirit, also a motif in bogolanfini musotigui, husband, literally the owner of a woman.

bury me in mudcloth
when god created the world bogolan was there.
amma birago
the woman and then the hunter became.

and before god

it is war. it is war and we mourn:
while women bleed, men bloodbath.

17 | P a g e

in prose of bogolan. circa 1945.

les Salons de la France d'Outre-Mer
& Echoes of War.
ten poems

i ask that you

BURY ME IN MUD
CLOTH
written by

amma birago

bury me in mudcloth
when god created the world bogolan was there.
amma birago
the woman and then the hunter became.

and before god

it is war. it is war and we mourn:
while women bleed, men bloodbath.