Slaves who painted dreams
The underfed lions in the Emperor’s palace
Pace behind iron gates on the Hill of Spring -
The pachyderms die unwatered on the banks of the Zaire
River Zoo as generations of war machines parade -
The wildebeest corpses piled and rotting on the wires
Strung up to guarantee well meat for Smithfield market -
Enclosed, mortgaged, incorporated, the hills and streams
Of the Namib, in the power of men who would own mountains
While in survival style, the market boys
Who line the treacherous tarmac heading to Mpika
Hold up puppy-dogs and rabbits by the ears
As the WaBenzi roll their big wheels by.
At rest, I see in outline, the shade-net nurseries
Of saplings watered in their plastic stands
Awaiting the Sahelian rains to soften the soil
In the perforated hillsides of Santiago de Praia
And “green diamonds” from the Gaborone dam, sold side by side
On Saturdays, with batiks from the Roll-the-Blanket museum
And the sandals from Pilane that will wear for years -
Those old tough tanned cow hides.
Awaking in the year two thousand, seeing again:
Old children in displacement camps on the Limpopo
Freed from indentured rebel service, faces distended,
Eyes not alive. And more than this. The rows of skulls
In a church of memory in Rwanda.
And I remember reading of
A father in Bosnia nailed to his front door. A man
Dragged behind a Texas pickup until he too was dead.
And a kid from Senegal, reaching for his identity,
Blasted with bullets in a Bronx brownstone
Until he too was dead.
When I was a child: A Turkish “radical”
Was burned to death with acid on a hillside. A newspaper photo.
Accusing image, the open mouth, without an accompanying word.
A poet-singer whose song I did not know, not then,
His fingers were broken carefully, before he was shot
In the Santiago de Chile stadium. I lost count of it all
Somewhere in the 8th decade of the twentieth century.
Does someone remember every name, and every crime?
Is every insult registered somewhere, an injury?
Are we learning to own the count ourselves,
Lest we be slain once more with numbered forearms?
Will we renounce before it starts again, tomorrow?
[...] Read more
poem by Frank Bana
Added by Poetry Lover
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