Africa Poems
Boots
by Rudyard Kipling
INFANTRY COLUMNS
We're foot--slog--slog--slog--sloggin' over Africa --
Foot--foot--foot--foot--sloggin' over Africa --
(Boots--boots--boots--boots--movin' up an' down again!)
There's no discharge in the war!
Seven--six--eleven--five--nine-an'-tw enty mile to-day --
Four--eleven--seventeen--thirty-two the day before --
(Boots--boots--boots--boots--movin' up an' down again!)
......
Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
......
Everybody Is Doing It
by Benjamin Zephaniah
In Hawaii they Hula
They Tango in Argentina
They Reggae in Jamaica
And they Rumba down in Cuba,
In Trinidad and Tobago
They do the Calypso
And in Spain the Spanish
They really do Flamenco.
In the Punjab they Bhangra
......
African Rain
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
It falls with grace.
Metallic bawls hail the strength of zinc roofs.
At the mercy of the thatch,
Drops drip from needle points of skeletal
Palm fronds.
Particles of rain descend on thresholds
Among dewed terrains.
The petrichor befriends the atmosphere,
Caressing limpid warmth with floating cold.
Lightning, a white dancing Anaconda, races with speed,
......
Africa
by Claude McKay
The sun sought thy dim bed and brought forth light,
The sciences were sucklings at thy breast;
When all the world was young in pregnant night
Thy slaves toiled at thy monumental best.
Thou ancient treasure-land, thou modern prize,
New peoples marvel at thy pyramids!
The years roll on, thy sphinx of riddle eyes
Watches the mad world with immobile lids.
The Hebrews humbled them at Pharaoh's name.
Cradle of Power! Yet all things were in vain!
......
Will you Dance with me ?
by Ghairo Daniels
WILL YOU DANCE WITH ME ?
Will you dance with me
after I’ve mopped the passage
and fed the dogs
Will you dance with me to my
Mexican samba ?
......
African Night
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
Mother of stars,
friend of the moon,
it is often quiet but for its own heartbeatꓽ
the rhythmic sentence pronounced
in one benign-hammering syllable,
which pounds away hostile darkness
laid bare by the wakeful heavens
whose ears listen to tales from
old folks passed on to a glowing age,
and proverbs that leave one and all in awe.
......
The Bridge
by Ghairo Daniels
The bridge between our hearts
as fine as spiderweb threads
Along it soldiers march
workers trample, children skip
with balls of light
cows graze, horses gallop
Between our hearts the bridge
is held by the Tree of Life
......
Africa
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
Africa,
I reconcile your genius with nostalgia,
perfervidity and relic lust;
your age with the whiteness
of a virgin void of earliness;
and your life with the tenderness
of the yolk of God.
......
Through a break in the trees -
by Amy Michelle Mosier
Through a break in the trees -
Flows a tawny river -
Sanding the rock endlessly
As a peerless carver.
The jungle is not seen
In the murky water's face.
The sky does not skim upon
Its delicate countenance.
......
