CALLING ON THE ANCESTORS 2008

CALLING THE ANCESTORS







It’s a two-tone life here; there are children,
Orphaned, living on the streets, or employed
By His Royal Highness, a fighting force
For freedom and fear. There are children,

Suffering, untreated, from malaria and TB.
There are clinics without medicine, hospitals without staff,
Schools without teachers. These are no secrets,
I will tell you no lies but look and listen!

In smart hotels, with their stars and commisars,
Are wealthy women, wedded to smart men,
And there are children; designer clothes, shoes that shine and skin
Proud to be on view, to be admired, even envied.

At the breakfast bar, they eat their fill
And then return for more. The hours slip away with the dollars
Until these royal families hit the town in their waiting Mazdas,
Mercedes, Mitsubishis and their magnificence.

From their new-build suburbs, inocculated
By private solar panels, generators and bore holes,
They drive to Relatives in the Rural Area,
Vehicles loaded with commodities unavailable in Eden.

At the fuel station, they show the coupons,
Bought online with foreign dollars, pounds and euros,
Long before the journey home began. On the trailer,
Spare fuel drums to feed friends in the fields.

There are politicians, dressed to kill,
Who hope to live by playing by the rules,
His rules, whilst mindful of the all-seeing eye;
The Father of the people, Liberator, Diplomat, Hero.

He is the Father of the People who cry,
Hungry for a father’s love, a father’s protection,
For food on the table and a place to sleep at night;
For the school fees that will give them wings to fly.

On foreign flights, the fat, bespectacled controllers
Settle down for the long haul; another term in office,
More conferences in the wider world, ensuring food in the belly,
Iron in the soul. Their children are sleeping safe at home.

They rest in turn, these politicians; bodyguards mark
Other passengers, the crew, the passage of time,
The movie whose diamonds are found and lost
In the silent, civil conflict that is their feeding ground.

It’s a two-tone life here; there are children,
Born, then dying. There are mothers,
Waiting, reaching out a hand of welcome,
Or is it resignation? There is still music;

There is music, there is mbira, marimba,
There are musicians singing of diamonds
In the border mountains and hungry river basins.
The ancestors, it seems, have not forgotten their children.

Copyright: Madresicilia 2008