Collected Poems

Abandoned weeps in the shadows.

Their Idiot Song

These fellows, the old pagan

said, surely are out of their mind—

that old proudly impervious

derelict skirted long ago by floodwaters

of salvation: Behold the great

and gory handiwork of Death displayed

for all on dazzling sheets this

hour of day its twin nostrils

plugged firmly with stoppers of wool

and they ask of him: Where

is thy sting?

Sing on, good fellows, sing

on! Someday when it is you

he decks out on his great

iron bed with cotton wool

for your breath, his massing odors

mocking your pitiful makeshift defenses

of face powder and township ladies' lascivious

scent, these others roaming

yet his roomy chicken coop will

be singing and asking still

but YOU by then

no longer will be

in doubt!

The Nigerian Census

I will not mourn with you

your lost populations, the silent columns

of your fief erased