PLUNDERERS OF HARVEST
The corn was ripe and tassels
Quivered golden in the sun.
Across the cloudless sky crows glided
And the wind whispered secrets
Of past harvest.
And we labourers sprawled
On the ground smiling hungrily
For the corn
That was ripe and ready for red-hot tongues:
Our palates moistened as the pot
On the stove bluntly sat scolded
By the greedy fire.
Then like a sudden gale in our midst
Those few lords
That decimate dreams carted away
The corn, all our corn.
Still the wind whispered
Husky secrets of rich harvest
In the private granaries, while
Our stomachs grew gaunt
And rumbling.
WAIF OF THE CITY
Trembling wet from the cold rain,
She waddles about
Scrap of a woman
In grubby clothes,
Stretching out beggarly foul fingers,
A trifling glance
Cast at her,
And you shrug her off like a scrap,
And move on;
Undeterred,
She, dull-eyed
In the scorching sun,
Lumbers after another pedestrian,
Waif of the city.
REGARDING A DESTITUTE
He withers away
A ragged man
With flaky skin
Grizzled filaments of hair
Dot his gnarled face-
So abject so African;
In the pavement
Hunched up this lone soul
In a cocoon withers away-
Outcast of a civil town;
A kind word
(not the beggarly kobo
Like the metallic glances
Thrown at him) may
Even assuage his anguish;
Lazarus’ fate:
Too leprous for a loving touch?
Ugh, shut him out!
You are not a hypocrite;
But this gargoyle face
Is ever aglow
In the dark of wretchedness while he waits
For the numbing pacific sleep
To waft him deathwards;
Over the somnolent town
Night acts the watchman, impassive;
Ushering the sun’s salubrious shafts
Embracing the pulsating hub
Of the crowd
And perhaps he is …
CHILD SOLDIERS
The sky sprawls hazy in the harmattan sun
A swath of dust broods
In the chill air
In the ghost of a Community School
Some rawboned boys
Quaint machine guns by their side
Puff at long strips of marijuana
Morose
He sits on a stump
Fingering the rifle
Like a chaplet
His eyes, shards of glass
His puerile mouth taut in a snarl
Like a lion’s cub…
This night when the moon hatches
Shadows and silhouettes
He and the rebels the brittle village, they will raid.
