OLD BEAUTY.

A flight of times,
A flight of petals,
The wind blows,
The perfect fades
Charms vanish.
Endless smartness,
Eternal sensuality,
O wild beauty!
The world adores your youthfulness,
We celebrate the death of time.

The Worshipper

I climb the hill of my feelings
To satisfy my sight.
I seek to find, my reason is lost.
In my estrangement my soul speaks.

Abandoned as a discarded plant
I look to thee;
All thy greatness is in my sight.
You leave your dwelling
As thy sun seeks its resting place.

I am rooted to your very being;
My branches cover your presence;
You move under my shadow.

I nderstand with the vigor of thought,
Thy body but with a glance.
I admire you without weariness
And explore you from discovery to wonder.

I praise thy sculptor,
Him, the all-wise, the all-bestower
Who, beneath the pounding of my misled heart,
Long ago fashioned your existence
For the accomplishment of compassion
And the gift of the essence of love.

I am the spirit who observes you;
You do not know me,
Yet you are a reality well known by me.

Source of poetic water from above,
Inspirational rain from the sky,
From thee my feelings are nurtured
Even in thy obscurity of me.

My words remain silent,
And for thee my existence still a fable
A dream that I shall never share,
A poem never to be written.

The Birth of the Sun

My tears are the lines of my novel
The characters are rigid
Stiff and ready to act in my cynical scenario
I am the milestone of all misfortunes
Miseries that hunts the running-gods in the firmamen
My splendour reaches the stars in the immeasurable spaces
And always declines as I attain 'Isis' giving birth to Apollo

--- extracts from Black Emeralds and Nomad, a refugee poet ---

biografia:

Born in 29.07.1979 in the Democratic Republic of Congo [Ex-Zaire] in Africa.

Raïs Neza Boneza, BA in Social Sciences, MA of Humanities, Currently lives in Norway where he works as a peace researcher and practitioner. He is also a poet who besides writing his own poetry work to promote artistic expressions as a means to deal with conflicts and maintaining mental well-being and spiritual growth after surviving war. Although Boneza may sometimes at least have wished to forget his experiences of war in the conflict ridden Great Lake region, he has never forgotten about both the richness and misery of Africa. He has lived in the east and in the west of the D. R. Congo, in Rwanda, in Burundi, and Uganda. He has learned seven African languages as well as the European imperialistic anguages and has got first-hand knowledge of the cultures of various tribes and the main ethnic groups in the region. This background, combined with his sensitive artistic mind and his scholarly background including his collaboration with one of the founders of peace research Johan Galtung, has equipped his analytical faculties with unique instruments to extend the project that Galtung has developed since the mid 90', to the African continent. He leads www.transcendafrica.org, Buildingpeaces.org/African Co-ordinator, Director of T:AP Refugees Project, representative of IDEAL International and Work as an Advisor for the Human Rights House/Advisor Group in Trondheim.
He is author of:
- Nomad, a refugee poet [cookcomm 2003, USA]
- Black Esmeralda [cyberwit 2005, India]
- Peace by Africa peaceful means. Essay [protea publishing, USA 2004]

and many other articles publihed worldwide.

Vegar Vjordanger, Building Peaces/ NTNU[Norwegian University of Science and Technology]

Rais, Iam amazed at the sweep of your essay and the depth of your scholarship. I could be wrong, but I believe the African worldview is exactly needed today to inform Western cultures about deeper meanings of freedom and democracy, and to rid us of our ridiculous polarization into pro Bush vs. Pro Annan - neither of whom offer anything like a comprehensive framework for enduring peace! Dr. Bruce Cook, Cookcommunication [USA]