Collected Poems

Till crashing facedown in a million fragments

It was floated gleefully away

To cold shores—cartographers alone

Marking the coastline

Of that forgotten massive stance.

In our time it came again

In pain and acrid smell

Of powder. And furious wreckers

Emboldened by half a millennium

Of conquest, battening

On new oil dividends, are now

At its black throat squeezing

Blood and lymph down to

Its hands and feet

Bloated by quashiokor.

Must Africa have

To come a third time?

An “If” of History

Just think, had Hitler won

his war the mess our history

books would be today. The Americans

flushed by verdict of victory

hanged a Japanese commander for

war crimes. A generation later

an itching finger pokes their ribs:

We've got to hang

our Westmoreland

for bloodier crimes

in Viet Nam!

But everyone by now must