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