Africa, you were once just a name to me,
But now you lie before me with sombre green challenge
To that loud faith freedom
Which once proffessed, shouting
Into the silent, listening microphone;
Or, on an alien platform to a sea
Of white, perplexed faces, troubled
With secret Imperial guilt, shouting
Of you with a vision euphemistic
As you always appears
To your lonely sons in distant shores....
image edited by me. Original image from here
Then in my wisful exile's mind
The dusty East End lane would vanish
In a grey mental mist,
Leaving behind a warm, shimmering image of you.
The hibiscus blooming in shameless scarlet,
And the bougainvillea in mauve passion
Entwinning itself around strong branches,
The palm trees standing like tall, proud, moral women.
Shaking their plaited locks against
The cool suggestive evening breeze,
The short twilight dwindling,
The white, full moon turning its round
Towards the swept open space
Among the trees, there will be dancing there tonight,
And in my brimming heart
Plenty love and plenty laughter.
Oh, I am tired of sausages and mash
With trifle and cream to follow,
Of clay-brown tea in breakfast cups.
And 'please return your trays here'
I am tired of grim-faced, black-coated men.
Reading the 'Financial Times' with impersonal fear,
Of slim City typists, picking their sandwich lunches
Like forlorn sparrows, in chromium milk bars.
Of unfulfilled men shouting the racing editions
As I buy my ticket to Camden Town, N.W.I.
I am tired of crouching over the spluttering gas fire
In this my lone bed-sitter,
Of queuing up for cheap Lamp chops,
As two for one-and-three.
The only thing I am not tire of
Is the persistent kindness
Of you too few who are not afraid
Of my grave dusky strangeness.
But now i am back
Gazing at the sophistication of your brave new cities.
Whose very names hold promise.
Dakar, Bathurst, Cotonou,
Lagos, Accra, and Bissau,
Monrovia, Freetown, Libreville.
Freedom is really in the mind.
Go up country, so they say
To see the real Africa,
For whoever you may be,
That is where you come from.
Go for bush, inside the bush
There you'll find your hidden heart
Your mute, ancestra spirit.
And so i went, dancing on my way.
But now you lie before me, passive, actual
With your unanswering green challenge.
Is this all you are?
This long, uneven red road, this occassional succession
Of huddled heaps of four mud walls and thatched falling grass roofs,
Sometimes ennobled by a thin layer
Of white plaster, and covered with dull, silvery
Slanting, corrugated zinc
Those patient faces on weather-beaten bodies
Bowing under heavy marked loads.
The pedalling cyclist wavers by
On the wrong side of the road,
As if uncertain of this new emancipation.
The squawking chickens, the pregnant she-goats
Lumber awkwardly with fear across the road,
Across the windscreen view of my four-cylinder kit-car.
An overladen lorry speeds madly onwards,
Full of produce, passengers, with driver leaning
Out into the swirling dust to pilot his
Swinging, obsessed vehicle along,
Besid him on the raised seat his first-class
Passenger, clutching and timid, but he drives on
As so, so many miles per hour, peering out with
Bloodshot eyes, unshaven face and dedicated look,
His motto painted across-Sunshine Transport,
We get you there, quick, quick.
The Lord is my Shepherd.
I know i shall not want, my lord,
Though i have reddened your green pastures,
It is only because i have wanted so much
That i have always been found wanting.
From South and East and from my West
We look across a vast continent
And dare to call it ours. You are a country, Africa,
You are a concept,
Fashioned in our minds, each to each,
To hide our seperate fears, to dream our seperate dreams.
Only those within you who know thier circumscribed
Plot, and till it well with steady plough
Can from that harvest then look up
To the vast blue inside of the enamelled bowl of sky
Which covers you and say, 'This is my Africa', meaning
'I am content and I am happy. I am fulfilled, withing, without and roundabout.
I have gained the little
Longing of my hands, my heart, my loins, and the soul
That follows in my shadow.'
I know now that is what you are, Africa.
Happiness, contentment fulfillment and a small birth singing on a mango tree.
