After reading about small fragments of the solar system

I've just finished reading 'Half of a Yellow Sun' by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. You can read an exerpt from the book on the authors website, here: http://www.halfofayellowsun.com/content.php?page=excerpt&n=2&f-2
It is a book which has clearly made an impact on many folk who have read it. You can read some of the responses here:
http://www.halfofayellowsun.com/public/yourstory/guestbook.php
and even add your own.
I was given the book by my friend Sarah and it arrived the day after I had my PhD viva two weeks ago. I had only a hazy memory of Biafra, I was a child of about 10 when it all happened but I remembered words like kwashiorkor, although not well enough to be able to spell it without looking it up.
My own African memories are generally of Kenya and of Southern Africa. I have memories of Zimbabwe from several visits in the 1980s and 90s so I was glad when our friend Margaret had some poems written by her lat husband Brian Louis Pearce published this year. Called 'Voices Spits Silence', you can get it on Amazon. The poems were written during 1997-8 when Brian worked as a librarian at the Bulawayo Theological College. They are brilliant.
I also got an email today from Gerald West, my former supervisor at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, where I first learnt about Contextual Bible Study. You can find there stuff here http://www.ukzn.ac.za/sorat/ujamaa/resources.htm
All of which focused my thoughts on these small fragments of the solar system as you can see:

Words come back to us


Words come back to us,
names recur,
memories spring up like new grass.
You live through what you write
and so do I;
hanging on each word,
tongue trying each name,
hands holding each memory.
Neither sticks nor dust,
spirits rise to dance around us.
I join in
hoping the dream will outlast sleep,
hunger or dementia.
But the power of the wind
will blow the dust away
until it collects in another corner
and fertilizes other words.

Dust-dancing Spirit,
whirl us up with your energy
that the heat of memory
may become the fuel of life.

JAL: copyright 18.03.2009