Jongo by Neil Leadbeater

Goes back a long way. Was Semba or Masemba in a distant African past.

Those old Angolan guessing games, the Jinongonongo

 

alive in the Vale do Paraíba: that rich metaphor

revering an ancestry of magic, movement and music

 

the circular dance with the couple in the middle

instruments tuned by fire

 

and the jongueiros beating out a rhythm

on loud Caxambu drums. When they caught

 

your eye and saw your soul

they took it out of the skin of your body and gave it a ritual shaking.

 

You watched it spinning out in the open

whole and frail like anaemic jelly

 

that never lost its shape

until they returned it from where they had taken it

 

letting it loose into the folds of your body

so that when you left you were no longer scared

 

but a person as whole as you will ever be

this side of heaven.

Neil Leadbeater is an editor, author, essayist, poet and critic living in Edinburgh, Scotland. His short stories, essays, articles and poems have been published widely. His most recent books are Librettos for the Black Madonna published by White Adder Press, Scotland (2011) and The Worcester Fragments published by Original Plus, England (2013). His work has been translated into Spanish and Romanian.