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<a name="#6">Part Six:</a>
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<a name="#f1">
THE INCENDIARY POLICEMAN</a>
I stopped, then noticed some graves
Inside the wooded park of Baghdad.
I could not steal their soft dreams
And so prostrate, I fell on the sacred earth,
Solemnly kissing the landmark
Footprints in the land of Ur Chaldea
From whence the blessed fountain of
The triology set off on the holy journey
To the seat of the sublime communication.
As I raised my wet eyes from the ground,
I saw a lunatic policeman perched above
The horns of ancient civilization,
The gentle Tigris and Euphrates.
He was spitting on the sacred
Walls of the ancient Babylonia.
Was he oblivious to them,
The inhabitants inside the walled fence?
Watching up in the sky, the stars
Partly hidden from my wet eyes
By the ritually impure wings
Of the unlicensed police eagle,
I saw no signs of direction.
What could be my decision?
When the living dead, without vendetta
Had my cardiac arteries
Deluged with sorrow, even when
They opened no new wounds.
I, in glum solitude, soliloquize.
In frenzy, I cursed him,
The Incendiary Policeman to be drowned
In the cauldron of his own dementia.
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<a name="#f2">
AN EPILOGUE TO 1945</a>
At first I thought there was a burning hole created by
A wayward meteorite of a broken celestial glass, gaping in
The inviolable ambit of the remote blue sky and a rude
Sacrilegious flying dragon obeying the unfamiliar
Law of levitation to prowl in the sacred castle of the spirits.
I had neither seen the chequered calendar, nor could I
Have read and understood the enigmatic verse of the diary
Written in some palindrome as my simple peasant mind had hardly
Approached any near the veranda of the bourgeois library
To comprehend the undulating era of napalm and the Orange Agent.
An expatriate teacher wearing a simple beautiful attire of sari
Had just introduced me to the gorgeous geography of China and Vietnam.
But the farthest my eyes traveled was the model of a globe delicately
Balanced in the farthest corner of the geography laboratory constructed
With the fund generously donated by the Rockefeller Katanga Concern.
My mind was tilted to disbelief as I had just completed reading
The little red book of Chairman Mao, had it not been for Lin Piao’s
Treachery to burn it into colourless ashes over the historical Yellow River, even though
Fortunately for me 1952 was only four years away from
The first clogging of the Suez Canal and the unholy tripartite marriage.
And my father who had fought unrewarded on the side of Winston Churchill
Had just bought a transistor radio to follow the drowning of the Majesty’s Crown
In the Canal under the impact of the Sinai sand storm caused by the latent force
Of the vitriolic diatribe dressed in the proverbial rhetoric of oriental poetry,
Knowing well if the hulks burned red-hot, the Red Sea would redden the more.
After all if Farouk wasn’t already dead in Turkey, then he was ailing in one
Hurriedly constructed summer resort in the mountains of Switzerland.
I was therefore lucky to be born under the full blaze of Abdul Nasser’s oratory
When the ignominious retreat of the Majesty’s generalissimo freed the children
Of the Sphinx to preserve Cleopatra’s beauty in the Stone-hieroglyphics.
Thus offended, the gnomes of the declining Majesty’s Pounds Sterling
Ordered their cousins who had come from the usurped Wild West to excavate
The historical lands where the Ptolemies were buried to leave in fury.
To please the incendiary, they chose to swim up against the river currents
And so reach Lake Victoria from the earthen remains of the Mummies.
Then I heard it over the transistor radio my father had just bought.
Uncle Sam’s children were hazardously seeking solace at the lakeshores.
Named after their grandmother, its shores could be peaceful for self-enrichment.
And why not? They hadn’t anticipated the 9th October 19621, the date a new
Oratorical Milton2 of Paradise Found would replace the Milton of Paradise Lost.
So we intercepted them even before they reached the source of the Nile,
Having survived the cataracts of the Anya Nya3, they could have been
Torn and eaten into fine particles by the turbines of the Owen Falls Dam.
And so they introduced me, to my later disappointment, to television screens,
Which took my sights beyond the model of the globe in the geography laboratory.
At first I saw the images of the revelers basking in the Miami Beach summer.
Those were the appetizers, sweet enough to beckon some delicious à la carte dish.
I thought we were all innocent and spared the horror of the burning Alexandria
When I soon saw the images of peaceful Vietnamese men and women
In the pally swamps and rice paddies, the objects of their ultimate love.
My half optimism soon traveled full length, anti-clockwise, and bitterly
Turning into full pessimism as the television screens shone cruelly bright
Showing steel eagles flying low over the once tranquil city of Hanoi.
The unknown fliers in denims, dropped molten lava in a gory orgy
Rendering the moonlight an irrelevant sterile meal of the yester-night.
Then a blonde television presenter unraveled the mystery of the chequered diary,
The dawn of a new era; African drums were wet and would remain silent forever;
The Asian flute was permanently mute, and would not sound even for cremation;
The prophylactic blast of the meteorites in their megatons would suffice for them,
The era of nuclear incandescence had arrived: a fitting denouement to 1945?
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1 The date Uganda got independence from British colonial rule.
2 An allusion to Dr. Apollo Milton Obote to whom the instruments of power were handed on attainment of the country's independence. He was a good friend of Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt and particularly not likeable to the governement of the USA of the time for his open support for the anti-American (Lumumbist) rebels in Congo-Kinshasa.
3 The rebel movement that waged Sudan's first civil war (1955-72).
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<a name="#f3">
THE SILENT SILENCE</a>
The wintry dew rests itself firmly on the locked shutter,
Awakened by the incomprehensible onomatopoeias of the boots,
The frightened hermit recollects slowly, waking up.
Alas! Barely standing up but without quite waking up,
Timidly touches the handle with his frail hand,
Feeling freezing cold in the midst of the equatorial scorpions,
He withdraws into the warmth of his bed,
Or, is it the warmth of the dying fire?
Or, is it the warmth of his worn-out blanket?
He falls back on his scraggy back,
Looks up to the dark colouration of the roof,
Dilapidated, the grass thatch lets fall into his eyes
Some soot intermingled with peeled-off scales of a dead lizard.
Unable to decipher any meaning of Time,
No longer in the know of any Place,
He lets his soul fall to fate as the intruders set about,
Setting ablaze this hut and that granary.
In the borrowed winter robes, to the intruders,
The cold dewy dawn counts naught.
Only as the sun claims its place
In the terrestrial sub-domain of the cosmos,
And the borrowed winter robes tire the borrowers,
The slave marauders and their mercenary over-seers,
Do the agents of degeneration and corruption fall
To kiss the hot charcoal of their own inferno.
By that time, not even the silence of the silent,
Is loud enough to save the timid.
Except the audacious, wounded though,
Survives undaunted to tell the bitter tale
That shall go down for a story told and re-told.
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<a name="#f4">
FAIR FREEDOM</a>
Fair Freedom, we long for your return;
You, having hastily departed
In the face of the hot air
That violently blew from the furnace
Of that man-made glass caves hidden in the clouds,
Just as the sun was beginning
To measure the length
Of the handle of the adult spear.
Fair Freedom, we solemnly bereave,
Weeping for your departure
Even before you reached mid-way
To your noon, just as the morning dew
Was beginning to say adieu to the grass;
And you abandoned the milk of that morning
At the foot of the granary, never to sour to taste
But waste away in fermentation and final rot.
Fair Freedom, we pray for your safe return
That the cruel iron boots
Of the re-incarnated Cecil Rhodes slip
Over your head, scratching if at all,
But at the surface of the replaceable skin,
Thus sparing the skull that houses the gray treasure
So, you may think of your orphaned beholders
And throw your umbrella over them.
Fair freedom, we confide in your insolubility,
Confident that with our sweat dripping
On the roofs of the high glass caves, cooling gently
The oozing hot spring of their volcano
Our blood shall resurrect our blacksmiths
Who lying in coma at Mapumbubwe*, await the moment
When the nefarious iron boots of the
Monsters shall melt in their cauldrons.
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*"Mapumbubwe" is sometimes spelt as "Mapungubwe". It is a famous site of a pre-colonial iron culture, located in the modern Zimbabwe. I sought some clarification for the variation of the spellings. This is what a comrade from Zimbabwe had to say:
Brother ZAN,
Both are correct. It depends on which part of Zimbabwe you come from i.e. in terms of dialects. The so-called Shona are not one ethnic group; they are a grouping of many sub-ethnic [nationality] groups with different dialects. The standard Shona language as we have come to know it is an imposition by the colonialists.
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<a name="#f5">
MOTHERS’ EXHORTATION</a>
For the pain we felt in our wombs, our son
Hold your heart and hearken our ululation:
In the mousy’s teeth is reflected your fate,
Smiling to show but belie one colour.
Of the shown, by your naked eyes you see,
But only your sixth sense shall tell of your gore.
See the half-light reflecting the unclipped dahlias.
It deludes you into seeing the resemblance of emerald.
Against the silhouette of the magnolias,
Are glittering eyes that never see but sniff.
What reality can you make of the mixed premonitions
As sweet smiles are contradicted by eerie winds?
Only the arrival of one willowy will save you
As she beckons you to the willows in the gentle rain.
Then shall you realize, the unseeing sensitive eyes
Actually sit on the corpulent head of a clammy thread.
And of the dahlias and the alluring mirage of diamonds
With the harmony the magnolias borrow from the rainbow,
There lies the dicey sweet scent of the flower,
Its bitter fruit unveiled by the proverbial Macbeth:
"Be welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue! Look like the innocent flower,
But be the Serpent under it."
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<a name="#f6">
THANK THE HOMING WAGTAILS</a>
We are grateful to Abraham
He left footprints for us to follow
And if we feel thirsty, we shall follow him
To arrive at the kraal of Solomon
Where we shall drink from his wise vase.
Should a hostile meteorite obey Nero
And fall on our naked skulls,
Our ancestors had the foresight,
They bequeathed to us some medicinal plants.
Their roots are cool, soothing;
We shall gently rub them on our heads.
Who says wounds shall fester on the blessed heads?
Let the peasants remember to respect the libations,
Elders, you are right to eat the roasted meat reserved for you,
But you must keep singing the ageless epics,
The sweet sounds of the youths’ flutes are already rising
And from atop the hillocks, the emboldened mothers ululate
Watching the homing wagtails,
As the hornbills say adieu to the setting sun.
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<a name="#f7">
DEMISE IN AUDACITY</a>
The tearless crying eyes,
in the silence of the courageous
watch the destiny’s canopy drift;
beneath the feet, the scorched earth erodes.
The doctor stands bemused; and
at her, lying on her countable ribs,
the nurse looks at that withering away
as the festering leg disengages from the body.
The peacemakers laugh sardonically
and the priest at the altar grimly smiles
as the eagle flashes its own image;
joyfully both salute, kinder to burry than resuscitate.
The tearless crying eyes,
in the silence of the courageous
are still there, never blinking but
witnessing the doctor’s élan ebb.
The dry season has arrived,
and like the bush fire
turning the hill slopes black and grey,
effrontery gnaws humanity.
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<a name="#f8">
GIRLS’ FAREWELL BY THE RIVER BANK</a>
The sombre walls of the sleeping forest
Tremble under the sounds of the burning bells
And the eerily silence of the dark night are
Interrupted by the howling of the slobbered dogs,
The malefactor roams about planting sharp thorns.
The night, very dark, is ideal for the gorgon’s opera
Following the retreat of the sun beyond the masses of the thick cloud
Where the lights seemed to have conspired with darkness
Thus siding with the wicked to humble the power of good.
Even the stars are too shy to gaze down upon the earth.
Far above the jagged peaks of the distant mountains
The forests display a mirage of steaming evening fog,
Preventing the blessing of the much revered rain,
As if encouraged by the unwonted, deep silence of the forest,
The waterfalls speak with deafening roars, condolences from our lips
Like the blind, we cannot distinguish form from formlessness,
And like careworn sages, we drift from our hovels towards the river
Feeling the painful torment of solitude bereft of peace.
Our ears can hear nothing except the moaning of our bleeding souls
That seems to rise above the deep murmurs and violent gurgles of the river.
The indifferent river goes on, floating in its selfish discourse.
It never ceases as we cease, keeps on fast as we slow to a stop.
Leaning on our broken stuff, we envy it as it defies joy and sorrow alike
Leaving us to brood over our suffering and strife, our failures and deaths,
Yet carrying us along, deep into its bosom as friends and foes alike.
Perchance, our thirst drives us to drink love and hate from its waters, and
On the slippery banks of the life saver or giver of death, agent of delivery
Or of prison, our breasts and lungs let out a deep sigh of despair.
For the singing of the birds returns to a funerary lullaby, as we let
Our feet slip into the red river, thus carrying us to rest forever under the gorges.
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<a name="#f9">
LAMENT ON THE ANT-HILL</a>
This is the time to sacrifice the he-goat:
When mute, scansion of the children’s evening citations fall silent
The hissing from beneath the scarlet pimpernel rises high,
It holds down from ascent the spirit of the doting grandmothers,
Driving them to dote the squalling for fear the apocalypse is nigh.
And from the soot filled hut
let the girls violate the taboo
remove the cold drums to warm;
and why is the flicker in the hearth
not responding to the last winds -
fulfilling the premonition of the nightjar
that scudded over the mother queen?
This is the time to sacrifice the he-goat:
When the ancestral flute cannot sound at the third cock’s crow,
And the chill winds of the dawn bring home the news of angina,
The robbers are arriving to pin the king down on the cold floor
As he dreams of clambering an iron tree behind the guillotine.
And from the soot filled hut
let the girls violate the taboo
remove the cold drums to warm;
and why is the flicker in the hearth
not responding to the last winds -
fulfilling the premonition of the nightjar
that scudded over the mother queen?
This is the time to sacrifice the he-goat:
When the talon causes the canvas of blood to spread in the kraal,
And the scabbard remains closed, fastened to the hips,
And like the snared monkey, the guards are tantalized into hypnotism,
The disconsolate courtiers let ajar the portcullis to the courtyard.
And from the soot filled hut
let the girls violate the taboo
remove the cold drums to warm;
and why is the flicker in the hearth
not responding to the last winds -
fulfilling the premonition of the nightjar
that scudded over the mother queen?
The he-goat cleanses the content of the scabbard
And by its horns paws the eerie air to bless its own immolation,
So its blood may not earn the curse of the mother earth
When called upon to unbind the soul tethered to the burning rock:
Yes,
When hallucinatory apparitions of ogre appear,
Seeming more real than life’s hooks:
This is the time to sacrifice the he-goat.
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<a name="#f10">
ON THE ROCK OF MY ANCESTRY</a>
In Romania, the body died, it was of the Osagyefo*
And the torrents of sadness gushed out of the loud wailing.
I was too young to weep a mature weeping for him
So to date I continue mourning for him, the Osagyefo,
An everlasting mourning for the departure of Africa’s star.
Against the cruel world, I habour my cruel anger
That I have not met her who in this great misfortune
When the vanguard gate of Africa was breached,
Had the fortune to sit by his last bed in Bucharest
As gently the sage exhaled his last wisdom to Africa.
And my bleeding heart, perpetually stuck to Africa
Lets down into the mother earth, red drips fall.
My mind wanders from one foreign kraal to another.
And in every echo by Africa’s ice-capped mountains
Kilimanjaro, Kirinyaga and Rwenzori, I hear the intensity
Of the Osagyefo’s anthem, piercing the ears of the somnambulist.
Who says he stopped singing for united Africa in Bucharest?
I can hear in his echo a warning against the sorcerer,
The stealthily walking Prospero, the dejected Duke of Milan
Now resurrected as a colossus towering above Africa.
He commands Ariel to fly about, above and below the radars,
Thus forcing down the gullets of the continent’s orphans
Now abandoned by fate on the burnt banks of the Nile
The sharp bones of the stolen fish, and floating on the river
Are the decomposed remains the vultures have even rejected.
Who can command a clean-up operation for this timeless blood,
The life-blood of the primordial civilization when before the Osagyefo,
The illustrious Abdel Nasser laid silent, and the Northeastern gate
Was left ajar, and the desecration of the Sphinx began in earnest.
I look southwards beyond the great walls of Zimbabwe
And I see the warriors who entered into the walls of Cape Town
All crest fallen; they are sleeping on the boulevard pavements
For listening to the returnees from the sojourn to Churchill’s Museum;
And against Shaka’s exhortation, they drank from unknown bottles
So unwittingly did they place themselves under sedation
Leaving Steve Biko’s grave unguarded, open to the grave robbers.
My heartache aggravates and I trust no expert cardiologist
So for a peg, against the rock of my ancestry, melancholy is tethered.
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*Osagyefo is a title for Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of the Republic of Ghana and during his life time the leading champion of African Unity.
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<a name="#f11">
I DREAM OF A VULTURE</a>
I dream of a vulture perched on the thorny tree
whose poisonous seeds were blown from beneath the setting sun,
and scattered by the wild winds to germinate in a garden
once misappropriated by one accursed Nimrod
now much admired by the leprous boatman on the Thames.
I dream of a vulture perched on the thorny tree
whose poisonous fruits have been dropped by a rascal eagle,
and scattered in Hamurabi’s desecrated garden
to finally dissolve in the two rivers Ibrahim once cleansed;
and we thought pigs would never drink from them.
I dream of a vulture perched on the thorny tree
whose poisonous roots are spreading in all orchards,
and engrafting themselves onto the roots of our sweet oranges
to produce the portent gin that poisoned the mind of one rascal prince.
I could dream and dream and dream…
on and on and on…
but the sweet song of the nightingale awakens me;
I see a forged rusty sword fallen on the hot sand,
strange bodies rotting into misery of abomination after an unholy good bye.
After the putrid blood of Nimrod’s grand-followers dries
and is blown away by a directionless wind,
I get the sweet aroma of the holy blood oozing from the earth;
the living martyrs beckon me to celebrate their eternal victory
under the cool canopy of Sulayman’s robe whose sweet scent filling the air
could move her,
the Queen of Sheba,
in her distant court into an undying admiration.
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<a name="#f12">
I DREAM OF UR CHALDEA</a>
From Um Al-Qasr, I set off in search of Ibrahim’s cradle;
but the thick smoke vomited by the sinful eagle was too dark,
too opaque. I could not see the stars the noble astronomers marked,
the stars that guided our holy ancestors on their journeys to al-Quds.
So tired in body,
I lay in an abandoned orchard between the two rivers,
dreaming of Ur Chaldea.
But I do recall vividly in that dream I heard him,
like the Roman Artemidorus of the old,
warning me of the eagle’s anthem on the banks of the mighty Congo River,
undaunted, rumbling through Africa’s equatorial forest.
Yes,
I recall.
As I was dreaming of Ur Chaldea,
I heard Tchicaya U Tam’si before me
reciting:
Salute to every upright head
In another hour I shall be yapping
I will console with one hand
if they will let me torture with the other
this dying heart *
So I woke up to see,
A cowboy dressed in blood-spattered blue jeans sitting by a lake of blood
and from a human skull excavated at the foot of the Andes,
he drinks some palm wine looted from the Bight of Guinea;
blows the horn snatched from the Kalahari
to invite the lawyer from the Thames.
A lawyer dressed in a stolen robe of a murdered astrologer,
even though he never learnt to spell any single Oriental name,
pretends to be reading the constellation of the celestial
to cure the leprosy of the boatman marooned in the Straights of Jebel Tariq**
so that he may take them across the Suez to put out the holy fire of the Sinai.
By the dilapidated tomb of the Pharaoh in the Sahara,
two putrid minds fervently congratulate each other
as their artists paint the portraits of their vandals
burning the ancient library of the House of Wisdom
in which the Greek Master once took refuge.
On the two pairs of the holy banks, innocent souls resurrect
to see the sun rays pricking the evil eyes of the vulture
which had accompanied the eagle and burnt into ashes the thorny tree
as the nightingale slowly sings celebrating the ignominy of the pair
who sought to emulate Musa and Harun at the gate of Canaan.
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*The words of Tchicaya U Tam’si in his poem, "The Salute". (Tchicaya U Tam’si, Selected Poems , Heinemann (AWS) 1970; translated from French by Gerald Moore).
**Jebel Tariq is the Arabic name the Latins corrupted to Gibraltar.
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<a name="#f13">
I DREAM OF GOLD</a>
From under his filthy bowl hat, the sorcerer pulls out a bundle of green notes
bespattered with blood of the murdered baby
and presses it into the hands of the hermit whose mortal heart
is satisfied with his own destiny of dignity
and despises as a skin bag of evil passions
the naked belly jutting out of the ill-fitting jacket of green jeans.
Oh, what comes out of an ancestry that hides its history
in a song of plagiarized lyrics, a song of some stolen tune!
Like the water snake in the clogged river,
it coils itself around the tree of virtue
and let fall the fruits on the desecrated earth,
sounding the death knell of human culture.
Succulent and bitter fruits hang delicately on the branches of a flame tree
under which a summit of three robbers progresses;
like blood oozing from the bruised shoulders of my worthy ancestors
forced across the vast salty bridge,
red liquids drip from the fruits that resemble fists of flame.
Like the hermit, I shall prefer
the holy darkness of the cave.
Who says all lights are holy, when
after dreaming of gold, I
was awakened by the supplication of the hermit
to witness a demon flashing light from beneath the lethal tongue of a serpent?
Musa’s exit from Pharaoh’s palace is final,
and the holy fire of the Sinai is not for the covetous eyes
that have known no ablution;
so how can we trust a reptile that runs on its belly
when the Canaan is so callously desecrated?
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<a name="#f14">
I DREAM OF A DOVE</a>
I dream of a dove perched on the guillotine and
wake up to hear of three sorcerers
united by their love for hatred.
They kidnap and murder the Berber fishermen;
and into a cabal’s resort,
they turn the island off the Andalusia coast.
To their meeting to conjure a game of villainy
and win the hearts of Angels to dine with Lucifer,
they summon the Oceanic witch to play the magic skills.
But, alas,
what sane mind can dine
where the menu is monogrammed in the blood of Adam’s children?
For the inauguration of their vendetta,
they feed on the entrails of pigs
and drink warm stinking blood of hyenas.
Who then should wonder why
instead of a flock of sheep
they should win a flock of wolves?
They cannot feel the vulgarity of the current
that has swept them onto this island
off the Andalusia coast, far from the fresh waters and fruits of the Canary.
The brief lightning that has lit the eastern skies,
they have missed it
to get drowned in the long night of their dark hearts.
What branch of our genealogical tree
can save a triumvirate of an alien sorcery
from drowning in the spilled blood of Hawa’s off-springs?
It is dawn,
the Hoopoe has arrived, I
must set off to pray for another death.
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<a name="#f15">
I DREAM OF A WAY FAIRER</a>
I dream of a traveler crossing the Arabian Desert without a bottle of water
and a sailor on the Atlantic dying of thirst.
The angels have told me something new:
I could quench my thirst from a vase empty of water
when the vast ocean fails to save the thirsty travelers,
forced from the mother continent, from death.
The desert is not nothing;
nothing is not something,
the wide expanse of sand is something,
a magnetic object that pulls from the farthest poles,
defying the vast expanse of the accursed ocean.
I have not heard of a holy way fairer
dying of thirst on the road between Basra and Baghdad
but millions of my ancestors perished on the Atlantic for lack of water!
When I finish narrating this story,
three sleeping lunatics will wake up,
look up at the bright cold moon lighting the eastern horizon
and imagine some gold falling from a heaven they have offended
and press my kith and kin for dark obedience.
To plant a shaft of depleted uranium into an oasis well,
a herds boy shall pair up with a boy cleaning the chimney of Liverpool
to invite the son of the vine grower across the Straight of Jebel Tariq*
who would have been sleeping for all the millennia of human existence
had the Crescent not appeared on the peninsular.
Growing lighter at their bellies as their heavy tails start waging them,
three dogs shall keep bailing for the blood of the guardians of the oasis.
They know not what bitter death awaits them
when their masters,
or three sleeping lunatics shall wake up,
and competitively rush into the well of perdition.
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*Gibraltar
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<a name="#f16">
THE EAGLE IN DILEMMA</a>
When the eagle spread its wings
Thick and heavy over our world,
The sun disappeared into the remote sky
And darkness enveloped the plains and valleys.
Men and women became blind,
Like goats, tethered to the peg of fate.
They could not witness the shackles
As monsters wearing infra-red torches
Firmly fastened on their burning horns
Set about burning our homes
And others draining from the sacred stream
To live dry the valley of life to harness death.
The houses, deprived of sunlight
Could have decomposed in damp darkness,
Had they not set them in smoldering ruins.
Only one treasure remained unscathed,
The sacred anthem of the free ancestors
Its words, sharp like the warrior’s spear
Pierced the ears and hearts of the monsters
And the eagle could not descend unguarded
Thus its wings clipped, it wondered
"What detonator can detonate the strong will power?"
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<a name="#f17">
AFRICA, TELL HIM</a>
Brothers of the great Nile, Tigris and Euphrates,
I see you in nature's innocence gently flowing
Through the fields of the liquid black gold,
Effusive, attractive baits they are
For him, the rapacious prince of dead fortune.
Between nature's living fortune and
The innocent children of Ur Chaldea,
He seeks to super-impose an opaque curtain
Weaved out of thick blood, boiling hot.
His wild spirit, stirred by untamed passion
For a dukedom without boundaries,
Outgrows, sharper than a surgeon's knife
And pierces through its own sheath
And cuts asunder the hedge of reason.
But what wise prince can gamble
On the Ides of a date unwritten on the calendar
When in heaven saints reside not in castles
Built of glass walls and marble floors?
I see the earthly heaven of the prince
Glittering gold, crumble momentarily
Like a child's beautiful house
Built of cards on a mahogany table.
The daylight, saturated with the thunderous
Spectrum blotching the offended skies,
Becomes too dazzling for the ravenous eyes
And it mingles with impromptu darkness
To hide the noon sun whose existence
Is only recognizable by the heat
Melting the tall glass castles,
The prince's earthly paradise,
Into unrecognizable existence, icky ashes.
When the tempest subsides,
Nothing remains for the eyes to see
Except the gigantic Africa,
Telling him, the prince of passion
The ancient sacred taboo,
What stranger should insolently climb up
Unscathed into the granary of the clan?
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<a name="#f18">
WHITHER YOUTHFUL BLOOD?</a>
Whither youthful blood?
When the old one has run cold
And the Fatherland totters,
Under whose roof
Can the widow shelter
The innocent orphan
Who shall grow up
Never to know a father’s love
But always exposed to the insults
So easily meted by those in this land
Whose xenophobic psychology
Has become their culture?
Whither youthful blood?
The poor widow asks
When she sees her only neighbour
A widower himself
Walking in the ruthless tropical downpours
The remaining rugs all drenched cold.
There is one echo in the valley
Whose ululation is so loud
"Whither Patriotism?"
From the fertile Delta
Basking under the Sahara Sun
The conquered waives a fist
To acknowledge a hero’s welcome
And arousing the slumbering youth
To the rattling sounds
Whose hearts have resurrected
To sacrifice in honour.
The torrents must be defied,
For on the Equator the orphan shall grow
And with full zest erect one single hut
Under whose roof the widower shall peacefully
Rest on the lapse of the widow
Awaiting his final return to the last abode.
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<a name="#f19">
I Dream of a Carnival</a>
I dream of a carnival of cannibals led by
one Bush-man from the ancient city of Gomorrah;
buoyoned by Mussolini’s embrace,
he visits us looking for love by cluster bombs and depleted uranium.
His nostrils sniff every fortune far into the subterranean cave of the cosmos
yet rebel against his own passion
as vainly he attempts to rid his body of the remaining vomitive.
How can he escape the rare distinction of squatting on the red stool
placed on the right hand side of Hitler
when his belly is a pot of what even the hyenas have rejected?
The eyes, even though as covetous as those of the hunting dogs,
have been crushed by the dead stone sitting on his neck;
he cannot see with his open eyes the bright silence
sitting in the midst of humanity’s conscience;
and under the moonlight compromised by the hanging shadows of Emmet Till,*
he triumphantly displays as souvenir the cheek bones
his rabid dogs brought from the desolate suburbs of Basra.
I could have fallen on my back,
had I not had the premonition the previous night
when in a dream I saw ventriloquist jackals
celebrating a birth day with roasted flesh of a screech-owl
and two conquering sovereigns exchanging incredible credentials
ahead of a carnival of cannibals celebrating the departure of Hamurabi.
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*Emmet Till was a young black American lynched by a mob - in fact killed and dismembered for looking with desire upon a white woman.
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Posted: Thu Oct 10, 2002 6:46 am