Sinister to All
Water liftet not air
Nor can obiri kill its heir
Your precious hair
Is like my transport fare
been you to my den?
Or meetest thou Gwen?
Do you feel I will bend?
Or do I look like ten
Your dad holds bread
Yet you plait thread
your family head
Not worth being my friend
When we talk,
He feels tensed
I gave you my love
You let it fall,
All night astir
I feel like an empty hall
Chris Allagoa
Chris Allagoa is a young poet and a law student of Niger Delta University.
The Vultures
In that time
When civilization struck with insults
When holy water struck domesticated brows
The vultures built in the shadow of their claws
The bloody monument of the tutelary era
In that time
Laughter gasped its last in the metallic hell of roads
And the monotonous rhythm of Paternosters
Covered the groans on plantations run for profit
O sour memory of extorted kisses
Promises mutilated by machine- gun blasts
Strange men who were not men
You knew all the books you did not know love
Or the hands that fertilize the womb of the earth
The roots of our hands deep as revolt
Despite your hymns of pride among boneyards
Villages laid waste and Africa dismembered
Hope lived in us like a citadel
And from the mines of Swaziland to the heavy sweat of Europe’s factories
Spring will put on flesh under our steps of light.
David Diop
David Mandessi Diop was born on July 9, 1927 in Bordeaux, France to a Senegalese father and a Cameroonian mother. Back to Senegal, Diop started writing at a very tender age and he was one of the most promising French West African poets known forhis contribution to the Négritude literary movement. His work reflects his hatred of colonial rulers and his hope for an independent Africa. He died in a plane crash, at the age of 33, in 1960.
F for Figs
You tell me certain foods are for gods,
a taste and my powers may abound too.
I have eaten no figs, but I have longed
though I always kept your thoughts in tethers,
tied to the root of the land I have loved
and like you I found figs are fruit for the gods
that in dreams men can get fed a kind
to awake at morning with insights of spirits
I will sleep this night and await the dream
Of remaining a patriot with a soul in flight
To arise each morning
and go through the day
for those other things
I have returned with the tired back of the street
to sleep
and again dream the dreams of the land
and talk of wadding the storms or clichés like it.
Jumoke Verissimo
Jumoke Verissimo is a Nigerian poet and writer. Her first book, I Am Memory, has won some literary awards in Nigeria. Some of her poems are in translation in Italian, Norwegian , French, Japanese, Chinese, and Macedonian. She was born on 26 December, 1979
Child Soldier
Young limbs forage for their own
Strutting guns like toys
Small feet taming the jungle
Soldiers going to war
eat gunpowder for supper
O but God they're children still to grow
dead bodies is the life they have known
Soon they too will be gone
Batsirai Chigama
Batsirai Chigama is an erudite Zimbabwean poetess. Her poems have been commanding audience all over African continent.
The Market Woman
Vivid colors of tropical fruits,
limes, oranges, mangos and pawpaws,
pineapples, plantains, bananas, guavas,
plums, eddoes, yams and cassavas,
sugar canes, palm nuts and red hot peppers.
Gleaming white heaps of new country rice,
tan baskets and brown mats,
blue-purple eggplants, red-violet kola nuts,
indigo head ties, lappas and Vai shirts.
Distinct arts of carvings and paintings,
jewelries of flashing gold, brass and copper.
The stage is set;
the buyers and the sellers have met
with plenty of haggling on the price
until an agreement is reached.
In Africa’s colorful marketplace,
women reign supreme.
Swift and graceful,
she takes her familiar place in the stall.
Then on a table or a bamboo mat,
she spreads her wares of
fuzzy green okras; ten to a pile.
Her hard 16-hour workday continues;
settling her price for little profit,
dashing to satisfy her buyers and
hoping they remember and come back.
Cleverly, she fills a crying baby’s mouth,
smiles at a waiting buyer whose order she’s tending,
exchanges three okra piles for some money,
then embraces her baby who stays hung sucking.
No leisure time, no relaxation;
attentive, diligent and tireless action.
Amidst the hurly-burly marketplace,
she, too, haggles with customers
over price and quantity.
Money earned feeds the family,
dresses the children, pays for schooling;
Grateful for her hard work on their behalf,
she is the heart of her family survival.
The market woman returns home,
kindles the fire and prepares the evening meal.
She serves food to her husband and children—she eats last,
washes herself, puts her house in order
then goes to bed at last.
Ophelia S. Lewis
Ophelia S. Lewis is a Liberian writer and humanitarian. She published her first book, titled "My Dear Liberia", a memory of pre- civil war in Liberia , in 2004. Ophelia is one of the most recognised female writers in Africa. She can be best described as both nationalist and feminist. She was born 7th Nov. 1961.
A Call
She did not call me by name
Not by the name my mother gave me
She called me by another name
A word
I have not heard it before
Yet I knew it was me.
Will you come under the cashew tree beside the
cemetery? I know no cashew tree beside the cemetery
No, I don't.
Yet I will go.
Perhaps a revelation awaits me
Have they discovered the coloured cowrie?
Or the specific herbs that will conjure
They perhaps have found the lost wanderer
I went after her.
She stood still beneath the cashew
And spoke not a word.
Koffi Awoonor
Koffi Awoonor Williams is a Ghanaian poet of Ewe origin. He was born in Ghana on 13 March 1935 and died in the Kenya Shopping Mall attack on 21 September 2013.
The Land of Unease The land never knows peace Where a few have too much And many none at all. The yam of this world Is enough for all mouths...
