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!)
......
Her Hair
by Charles Baudelaire
O fleece, that down the neck waves to the nape!
O curls! O perfume nonchalant and rare!
O ecstasy! To fill this alcove shape
With memories that in these tresses sleep,
I would shake them like penions in the air!
Languorous Asia, burning Africa,
And a far world, defunct almost, absent,
Within your aromatic forest stay!
As other souls on music drift away,
......
You Can'T Have It All
by Barbara Ras
But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys
until you realize foam's twin is blood.
......
Don't cry for me Africa
by Aldo Kraas
Don’t cry for me
Africa
I’ll never let you fade
Your voices echo in my heart
Your songs
They never fray
I see the pain
The silent tears
Etched deep within your soul
But in the longest
......
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,
......
Don't cry for me Africa
by Aldo Kraas
Don’t cry for me
Africa
I’ll never let you fade
Your voices echo in my heart
Your songs
They never fray
I see the pain
The silent tears
Etched deep within your soul
But in the longest
......
Poppies
by Ghairo Daniels
Poppies
I lay in your arms on a
Vacant bed of Poppies
Watching a midnight blue sky
As ancient ferns opened curtains wide
Cathedral upon cathedral
Passed before our vision
Each belled more splendid than the next
......
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
{ “Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, even as the strings of a lute are alone but they quiver with the same music” - Kahlil Gibran }
BRIDGE
A bridge between our H E A R T S
as fine as spiderweb t h r e a d s
along it m a r c h soldiers
workers trample, children s
k
i
......
