Troubles with Africa – A poem

Alexander Opicho February 27, 2022
Shutterstock photo/Juliya Shangarey

Not the deserts, or rivers, hills and mountains

With snakes, scorpions, spiders and all manner

Of poisonous creatures that crawl the valleys,

Gorges and thickets of forest and thorny bushes

Of Africa. Nor the sun and sultry temperatures,

Children of global warming and stellar cooling,

Nor the chilly highland temperatures at zero,

Freezing and hurling the curse of shaking teeth,

At those that walk these lands, up and down,

Left and right across the terrain, nor the oceans and

Lakes, seas and oases in the Egyptian deserts and

Other drylands of the Maghreb, nor the plateaus

And other table lands in the great rift valleys,

And fjords or tomboloo’s or ox-bow lakes here and

There, that are trouble in Africa.

No, it is man,

Yes, It is woman,

Indeed, It is the leader,

And it is the blind led,

Or that fill power crests 

Basins of followership

Made blind by nothing 

But cheap choices to be

What we are now, preferring

Badness for goodness, corruption

For hard work, and tribalism

For statesmanship, enticing

Fraud and cheating, for research

And holy dictatorship for our worship,

Planting old age brutality in every hole,

And the seedling is juvenile poverty,

Sprouting from corner to corner,

In service to despair and less hope,

For they are pitifully young; Nothing

They will harvest, but sin and perfidy

Of the foremen that went.

Last Edited by:Mildred Europa Taylor Updated: February 26, 2022

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