Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair, Kashiana Singh,and (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades.

I have emphasized that poetry, because it has the ability to fix things in memory, to make them understood and memorable and give them emotional weight, is highly effective at saying the important things that need to be said in this world. Along with the things that amuse and entertain, that describe and narrate, that create wonder and introspection, we need poems that say the important things.

Earlier in this series we had poems from Ladan Osman and Maria Nazos that were in that category. Today’s poem by South African Poet Laureate Keorapetse William Kgositsile is very much in this vein, and if you remember nothing else from this year’s articles, I would like you to remember this one.

First, a few comments about the poet. Keorapetse William Kgositsile (1938-2018) was born and grew up in an impoverished South African Township, witness to many of the ills not only of Apartheid, but to the long-lived consequences of European colonialism on the african continent.

He became active in the African National Congress, as journalist and as an outspoken voice, but was urged,  for his own safety, to leave the country in 1961. He spent most of his twenty years of exile in the United States, where, after earning his Masters at Columbia, he became a visible presence as a spoken word performer in NewYork. He taught at multiple universities and published ten collections of poetry and two more books on writing poetry.

Today’s poem, Anguish Longer than Sorrow, is about the accident of birth, or, as he describes it simply, referring to the children of families fleeing violence and starvation:

Empty their young eyes

deprived of a vision of any future

they should have been entitled to

since they did not choose to be born

where and when they were

So yes, if you have not figured it out yet, today’s discussion is about borders. In the U.S., discussions of the southern border have been an incendiary topic, fanned by political interests to polarize the population and garner money through fear. But the topic is global. This problem is everywhere.

Listen to the poet's own reading here: (https://www.lyrikline.org/en/poems/anguish-longer-sorrow-5908)

(You can read the full article text attheotherpages.org, or at The Other Pages onFacebook or Tumblr.