I
Magnificent Africa.
Narratives of
cooperation and order.
Streets of Zimbabwe,
paved with diamonds
ever lead through labyrinthine
longings.
Starving in streets and back alley haunts
diving in dumpsters for crumbs.
Who sits in the castles of the world?
Sokwanele liberationists,
black bands on our arms, black skin on our faces.
Bubbling up in gutters of Paris and Bonn.
The gutters of Toledo
run with the ruin of antelope.
Into the sand white-darkness they march,
crawl, jump, fly
to conquer different skins
and flatter noses.
Back to the cradle.
They will raise their tents above the
Tigris, the Euphrates,
but won’t be lulled to sleep
by the roaring water.
Their roars will wake the world.
Sleepwalking
through history.
Four-Hundred and Eight dead
in a bunker
1991.
And no rigging in
Kano.
Anonymous guerillas
hide in shacks below Bulawayo:
“You know this government is
just trying to keep a grip on power for
too long.
The country is now
ruined.
We see that there is no one
in this country who is going to
liberate it.
Even if it is high risk,
there is nothing we can do.”
Matobo Hills rise out of
grassland oasis.
Come see the balancing rocks!
Come see the grey rhinos!
Come see the grave of Cecil Rhodes!
Come see the lovely lakes!
Come see the bushmen with bones
in their noses!
Come worship the men in the castles.
Who are these guerrillas
in the bush killing
and being killed?
Anonymous bushmen
turning their press into
Molotov Cocktails.
II
Kolmanskop:
The diamond darkness of ghost towns
buried in the dunes of time:
German engineering and
global capitalism
sending stones
home home home.
But its emptiness swallows
and swallows whole
the milky capital
ejaculate of imperialism.
Glasplatz Station:
alpha and omega,
the hush of the glitter echoes through
the canyons of the world.
Reverberations in minds
and bodies of worlds never
to see the bottom of things.
The reverie of destiny
whispered on the Orange River,
always carrying the sand to the coast,
always separating empire
from empire,
always washing
the land of its past.
Orange River valley
where stones are plenty
where people are scarce.
North to Aranos,
outpost of progress,
the road winds
through winds and
waves through history,
heat, and turmoil.
South towards Botswana,
in Mata Mata.
Impatient Kalahari spiders,
weaving webs of silk and sand,
have learned to grill
their ants in the sun,
the ants who fight for
tufts of grass and
survival in their wanting
universe.
Will they make it
to Fish Canyon?
Destiny and hope drive them forward,
pushing to the next
clump of earth.
Ai-Ais cannot save them.
The ants noiselessly searching
for a hint and a
connection to the
tuft.
And Cecil Rhodes is
beastly
dead.
