It is Dangerous to Read Newspapers
by Margaret Atwood
While I was building neat
castles in the sandbox,
the hasty pits were
filling with bulldozed corpses
and as I walked to the school
washed and combed, my feet
stepping on the cracks in the cement
detonated red bombs.
Now I am grownup
and literate, and I sit in my chair
as quietly as a fuse
and the jungles are flaming, the under-
brush is charged with soldiers,
the names on the difficult
maps go up in smoke.
I am the cause, I am a stockpile of chemical
toys, my body
is a deadly gadget,
I reach out in love, my hands are guns,
my good intentions are completely lethal.
Even my
passive eyes transmute
everything I look at to the pocked
black and white of a war photo,
how
can I stop myself
It is dangerous to read newspapers.
Each time I hit a key
on my electric typewriter,
speaking of peaceful trees another village explodes.
1968
Colour Bar – By Oodgeroo Noonuccal
When vile men jeer because my skin is brown,
This I live down.
But when a taunted child comes home in tears,
Fierce anger sears.
The colour bar! It shows the meaner mind,
Of moron kind.
Men are but medieval yet, as long
As lives this wrong.
Could he but see, the colour baiting clod,
is blaming God.
Who made us all, and His children He
Loves equally.
As long as brothers banned from brotherhood,
You will exlude,
The Chrisitianity you hold so high
is but a lie,
Justice a cant of hypocrites, content
With precedent.
1990
The Town Joke
By David Hallett
for two days
he stood on the edge of town
edge of the world,
big black man
hitch a ride?
no way
no takers on a no-through-road.
they shouted they spat they threw
they just drove.
on the third day
he walked to the other end of town
edge of the world,
big black man
hitch a ride?
he stood silently
without food without sleep,
he mediated on their meanness
he withered;
they showered him with flints of gravel
they wore him down to the ground.
on the fifth day
he sat down –
he saw the land turn green
and the animal clouds &
dreams dancing in the heat,
he swam through the serpent
and flew the pelican night.
on the sixth day
he rested
he lay down in the road.
on the seventh dawn
he lay cold.
NOT MY BUSINESS
By Niyi Osundare
They picked Akanni up one morning
Beat him soft like clay
And stuffed him down the belly
Of a waiting jeep.
What business of mine is it
So long they don’t take the yam
From my savouring mouth?
They came one night
Booted the whole house awake
And dragged Danladi out,
Then off to a lengthy absence.
What business of mine is it
So long they don’t take the yam
From my savouring mouth?
Chinwe went to work one day
Only to find her job was gone:
No query, no warning, no probe –
Just one neat sack for a stainless record.
What business of mine is it
So long they don’t take the yam
From my savouring mouth?
And then one evening
As I sat down to eat my yam
A knock on the door froze my hungry hand.
The jeep was waiting on my bewildered lawn
Waiting, waiting in its usual silence.
1990’s
We Remember your childhood well
By Carol Ann Duffy
Nobody hurt you. Nobody turned off the light and argued
with somebody else all night. The bad man on the moors
was only a movie you saw. Nobody locked the door.
Your questions were answered fully. No. That didn't occur.
You couldn't sing anyway, cared less. The moment's a blur, a Film Fun
laughing itself to death in the coal fire. Anyone's guess.
Nobody forced you. You wanted to go that day. Begged. You chose
the dress. Here are the pictures, look at you. Look at us all,
smiling and waving, younger. The whole thing is inside your head.
What you recall are impressions; we have the facts. We called the tune.
The secret police of your childhood were older and wiser than you, bigger
than you. Call back the sound of their voices. Boom. Boom. Boom.
Nobody sent you away. That was an extra holiday, with people
you seemed to like. They were firm, there was nothing to fear.
There was none but yourself to blame if it ended in tears.
What does it matter now? No, no, nobody left the skidmarks of sin
on your soul and laid you wide open for Hell. You were loved.
Always. We did what was best. We remember your childhood well.
SONNET 130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
William Shakespeare
