Barbara

>I never trust myself with poems about Africa.

I was wondering why you say that until after a beautiful read, with some
gloriously descriptive lines (marked below*)

I came to this:

I wonder Africa when you will again find
the pulse within to make you care

and I want to scream the obvious reply - 'when we do'. Not you
particularly - but all of the West, smugly planning a comfortable old age
paid for out of pharmaceutical investments by pension firms who have no
interest (lit.) in demanding that AIDS drugs be taken off patent in the name
of world health etc.etc etc.

>I'd appreciate any comments.

Given my distrust of attempting to get any big political picture into a poem
without bursting it at the seams - I'd cut the summary and leave the reader
to do their own thinking.

hope that helps

Terri )O(

Barbara Ostrander:


Africa Lost

when I first stepped onto your age old soil
you were whole beautiful and wild
your streets bustling but safe
your faces carried a shy hope as surely
as they balanced firewood on their heads
freedom was the new taste in your mouth*
you rolled it around on your tongue*
inherited the hard labors of other men
who had tamed the dust
the unschooled boys

it was a time of peace

but it's gone to your heads
somewhere along the way you have come to believe
that you do not have to live by any law but your own
can take and grab and rape and kill
as you please
assume what is mine is yours
and so you steal what does not belong to you
using your children as though they are*
a rusted panga to be swung and thrust*
clearing your rampaging footpath*

I grieve

grieve for your famines
your earthquakes your orphaned children
your diseases that sifts you like*
cornmeal on the grinding stones*
mutilate the mind
as well as starving bones
I grieve for hearts turned cold with hate
blood thirst that will not be satisfied

I wonder Africa when you will again find
the pulse within to make you care

BBO
(c)10/02