Poems That Make Grown Men Cry (25 page)

The Meaning of Africa

Africa, you were once just a name to me

But now you lie before me with sombre green challenge

To that loud faith for freedom
(life more abundant)

Which we once professed shouting

Into the silent listening microphone

Or on an alien platform to a sea

Of white perplexed faces troubled

With secret Imperial guilt; shouting

Of you with a vision euphemistic

As you always appear

To your lonely sons on distant shores.

Then the cold sky and continent would
disappear

In a grey mental mist.

And in its stead the hibiscus blooms in shameless scarlet

and the bougainvillea in mauve passion

entwines itself around strong branches

the palm trees stand like tall proud moral women

shaking their plaited locks against the

cool suggestive evening breeze;

the short twilight passes;

the white
full moon turns its round gladness

towards the swept open space

between the trees; there will be

dancing tonight; and in my brimming heart

plenty of love and laughter.

Oh, I got tired of the cold northern sun

Of white anxious ghost-like faces

Of crouching over heatless fires

In my lonely bedroom.

The only thing I never tired
of

was the persistent kindness

Of you too few unafraid

Of my grave dusky strangeness.

So I came back

Sailing down the Guinea Coast.

Loving the sophistication

Of your brave new cities:

Dakar, Accra, Cotonou,

Lagos, Bathurst and Bissau;

Liberia, Freetown, Libreville,

Freedom is really in the mind.

Go
up-country, so they said,

To see the real Africa.

For whomsoever you may be,

That is where you come from.

Go for bush, inside the bush,

You will find your hidden heart,

Your mute ancestral spirit.

So I went, dancing on my way.

Now you lie before me passive

With your unanswering green challenge.

Is this all you are?

This long uneven red road, this occasional succession

Of huddled heaps of four mud walls

And thatched, falling grass roofs

Sometimes ennobled by a thin layer

Of white plaster, and covered with thin

Slanting corrugated zinc.

These patient faces on weather-beaten bodies

Bowing under heavy market loads.

The pedalling cyclist wavers
by

On the wrong side of the road,

As if uncertain of his new emancipation.

The squawking chickens, the pregnant she-goats

Lumber awkwardly with fear across the road,

Across the windscreen view of my four-cylinder kit car.

An overloaded lorry speeds madly towards me

Full of produce, passengers, with driver leaning

Out into the swirling
dust to pilot his

Swinging obsessed vehicle along,

Beside him on the raised seat his first-class

Passenger, clutching and timid; but he drives on

At so, so many miles per hour, peering out with

Bloodshot eyes, unshaved face and dedicated look;

His motto painted on each side: Sunshine Transport,

We get you there quick, quick. The Lord is my
Shepherd.

The red dust settles down on the green leaves.

I know you will not make me want, Lord,

Though I have reddened your green pastures

It is only because I have wanted so much

That I have always been found wanting.

From South and East, and from my West

(The sandy desert holds the North)

We look across a vast continent

And blindly call it ours.

You are not a country, Africa,

You are a concept,

Fashioned in our minds, each to each,

To hide our separate fears,

To dream our separate dreams.

Only those within you who know

Their circumscribed plot,

And till it well with steady plough

Can from that harvest then look up

To the vast blue
inside

Of the enamelled bowl of sky

Which covers you and say

‘This is my Africa’ meaning

‘I am content and happy.

I am fulfilled, within,

Without and roundabout

I have gained the little longings

Of my hands, my loins, my heart

And the soul that follows in my shadow.’

I know now that is what you are, Africa:

Happiness, contentment, and fulfilment,

And a small bird singing on a mango tree.

(1964)

Elegy for Alto

with drum accompaniment

AND THE HORN may now paw the air howling goodbye . . .

For the Eagles are now in sight:

Shadows in the horizon –

THE ROBBERS are here in black sudden steps of showers, of caterpillars –

THE EAGLES have come again,

The eagles rain down
on us –

POLITICIANS are back in giant hidden steps of howitzers, of detonators –

THE EAGLES descend on us,

Bayonets and cannons –

THE ROBBERS descend on us to strip us of our laughter, of our thunder –

THE EAGLES have chosen their game,

Taken our concubines –

POLITICIANS are here in this iron
dance of mortars, of generators –

THE EAGLES are suddenly there,

New stars of iron dawn;

So let the horn paw the air howling goodbye . . .

O mother, mother Earth, unbind me; let this be

 my last testament; let this be

The ram’s hidden wish to the sword, the sword’s

 secret prayer to the scabbard –

THE
ROBBERS are back in black hidden steps of detonators –

FOR BEYOND the blare of sirened afternoons, beyond the motorcades;

Beyond the voices and days, the echoing highways; beyond the latescence

Of our dissonant airs; through our curtained eyeballs,

 through our shuttered sleep,

Onto our forgotten selves, onto our broken images;

 beyond
the barricades

Commandments and edicts, beyond the iron tables,

 beyond the elephant’s

Legendary patience, beyond his inviolable bronze

 bust; beyond our crumbling towers –

BEYOND the iron path careering along the same beaten track –

THE GLIMPSE of a dream lies smouldering in a cave,

 together with the mortally wounded
birds.

Earth, unbind me; let me be the prodigal; let this be

the ram’s ultimate prayer to the tether . . .

AN OLD STAR departs, leaves us here on the shore

Gazing heavenward for a new star approaching;

The new star appears, foreshadows its going

Before a going and coming that goes on forever . . .

(1965–1967)