Africa in Poetry Week

To My Friends in the Diaspora:

In our apathy-in tragic apathy,
We watched between mouthfulls of corn and peanuts
As demented women, mere bones, wasted away
Fried by the hot noontime sun
In the simmering sand dunes of the Sahel.
How could we have cared?
How could we have cared about distant events
In Faraway African wilderness?

We watch in our tragic melancholy
As child mothers of Virunga, and Shaba
are caught in the quagmire and swampy squalor
Of Disease and War.

Africa crumbles as her demented son AU,
Dines off Selasie's golden platters
Unconcened;

Aa...a! AU, Africa's son:
AU fettes in the spirit of Noninterferences
As Virunga erupted in violence,
And Azania mourned her dead
Victims of Ayaki, a curse of gems.

AU adjourned for dessert in the Founding Heroes Hall
As the Sahelean sand
baked her destitute mothers and Children.
And the Atlantic glows red with victimsof oil and gems
As AU supped in the full glare of its fallen heroes.

Where is our Africanness?
That Africa should crumble
As you and I in the Diaspora blog
In empyt words from the comfort
Of our alien hideouts;
Quick to change our Cable channels
to football or a Soapy Opera
Whenever a destitute child
Visits our comfort zones.

We saw them;
You and I saw them;
The world saw them,
But our Apathy had turned tragic.


Joseph Alila.
(Author: Thirteen Curses on Mother Africa (A poem), ISBN 978-14303-1592-6)
http://jaramogialila.blogspot.com