A Year of Grace - Monique Mbeka

I’m getting a year of grace
from my year of pain and rage,
my year of famine —
a year to study film
production in Kinshasa
and finally come of age.

My year of grace is beautiful
for framing my young ideas,
my hopes and fears;
for giving me leave to love
the world around me and a soul
pierced by a thousand stars.

The world declares itself in words,
my pen has come alive.
My old diaries babble
that life is horrible,
I’ll never write so well again,
only the same poems over and over;

but I’ve better things to do
than who what where when.
We are as ‘free’ as ever
we hoped, and I’m writing this while you complain.

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Monique Mbeka (born 1962) Democratic Republic of Congo