The red reality

Frightens the eyes

Confuses the mind

Like the midnight nightmare,

The teeth of poverty

Rend children into pieces

Like wild dogs

Ripping sheep into bits,

The poison of ignorance

Engulfs villages

Like mist or smoke

On a traveler’s road,

The madness of corruption

Permeates all over

Like bilharzia germs

In a human body,

Breton Woods and accomplices

Suck our blood

Like a million ticks

On an animal’s body,

And the insolent ogres

Stuck on the reigns of power

Have encircled us

With barbed wire

Like dogs-of-war,

Yet

We, the children of Africa

Rebuff bidding farewell to the dream-

Oh, golden dream

The dream of a morrow

Where crocodiles

Sun-bathing on red carpets

Will be yester tales,

A morrow when

Libraries and laboratories

Will light the valleys

And the hills of Africa,

A morrow when

Children will walk in the villages

Without being munched on the way

By measles and whooping cough

A morrow when

Children will lift their brain power

To the apex of the eucalyptus

Without being pulled down by poverty,

A morrow when

Agricultural technology

Will kiss the land

To produce a super potato

Bigger than Africa

So that, to the rubbish heap we dish

This tin with which

With a smelly embarrassment

We make rounds around the glove

Begging for leftovers