The Bobo Marché

Marché is French for market. In this case, the sprawling, color-rife, and often bewildering market of Bobo-Dioulasso in today’s Burkina Faso stands as a metaphor for the selections in this book. Only the first eponymous poem takes place in the market itself. The others are scattered from a landscape blistered by a classic, and thus tragic, drought, to the deep forest of the Equator. Here is set the final story, “The Parrots of the Rainbow”, capturing the myth tales of an African storyteller.

Meet the Red Lands and the Emerald.

Welcome to Bobo Marché.
I never before knew what was meant
By the ancient oceans inside me,
Until this morning,
Beneath the solemn foreign trees,
I knew within my stranded heart
The course of falling seas… About