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.
Okigbo's Anamorphosis
I battered a king-sized cockroach
And its white blood splattered on my left big toe;
Did he who cut and crushed a young tendril
Also deny it the burial of the earth?
Who wept for the snuffed life of the cockroach, but I?
Who mourned for the forced death of the tendril, but I?
I, who am the remains of our sordid past;
I, in my piteous state;
- And the blasted stains on my foot!
Obiwu
Obiwu is a literary name for Obi Iwuanyanwu, director of the writing center at Central State University in Wilberforce,
Ohio, United States. His publications include Achebe’s Poetic Drive and The History of Nigerian Literature, 1772-2006 , both published in 2006.
Certitude
To those who fatten themselves on murder
And measure the stages of their reign by corpes
I say that days and men
That the sun and the stars
Are shaping out the rhythmic brotherhood of all people
I say that heart and the head
Are joined together in the battle line
And there is not a single day
When somewhere summer does not spring up
I say that manly tempests
Will crush those who barter other' s patience
And the seasons allied with men' s bodies
Will see the enactment of triumphant exploits .
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.
For Anita Roddick Had I a voice I would sing your song Had I a tongue I would speak your praise Had I the time I would live for you But here...
