The Second Dispossession

 

First came the pale ants

Who gazed in wonder upon the land

Stretching to the horizon and beyond, where

Man, bird and beast roamed free

Each belonging to no one but themselves

So they called us headless. 

Preposterous!

And with one swift stroke of the mighty pen,

Our Annexation Proclamation was drawn up 

With as little ceremony as possible; 

"We hereby claim this land for Her Majesty the Queen!"

But our fathers fought and bled and won it back

Then arose the new masters in our time;

Big men, genteel ladies, pot-bellied tycoons, 

Chiefs or 'thiefs', we know not,

Multinational looters and robbers,

and the political crooks behind them.

"The land does not belong to us;

We belong to it,

It cannot be sold"! Our fathers said,

Now they grieve in their graves, while

Red signs on whiteboards announce 

Our final doom:

“Keep off!

Private Property, No Trespassing!” 

 

All over the land, the signs rule.

Formidable,

Like sentinels keeping their watch. 

From the Black Volta westward to the slave defense wall

and eastward to the crocodile ponds, 

Community lands, ancestral lands, farmlands;  

Sacred grooves, river banks, marginal lands;

Every village within and without is being preserved

in the stomachs of our leaders.

Only the silent sentinels loudly

Proclaim the evil deed;

“Keep off!

Property of Looters International Ltd

Trespassers will be shot, survivors shot again!” 

The second dispossession alas! 

A traitorous cancer from within,

more deadly than the first;

Keep off here, Keep off there,  

Keep off everywhere, 

We cannot find a place 

even for our dead to rest!