Cease, Laura, cease, suspect no more
This careless heart has learnt to love,
Because on yonder lonely shore
I still at pensive evening rove;
Because of Henry’s worth I speak
With eager warmth and sparkling eye;
Because his favourite haunts I seek,
And still o’erjoyed to meet him fly:….
But, Laura, should my faltering tongue
Refuse to speak in Henry’s praise,
My
The black one is squatting-the red one is licking
his bottom.
(Cooking-pot and fire)
Two tiny birds jump over two hundred trees.
(Eyes)
The mourner has stopped weeping.
The pitying friend is still crying.
(Rain and the dripping leaves after rain)
Forsaken Knowledge
.
It was the golden age of knowledge;
It was the era of pyrite lies.
For all the feats and legends of man,
Faith marked their sullen demise.
.
Many millennia of war and conflict
Waged to determine whom was right.
Civil nations forced to heel and crumble.
The cruelty of man measured in might.
.
Victors skew
I Sundjata’s Conception
After it had happened
That Sundjata’s mother had become pregnant,
When she had been pregnant for one year,
Susu Sumanguru Baamangana’s diviners by stones said to him,
‘The child who will destroy your kingship
Has been conceived within Manding.’
Sumanguru gathered together all the women of the town of Manding
And for seven years
He kept them within
Has there ever been
since Stephen the Great
a time of peace and stability
when forest and soil thrived
and people lived and danced
in their traditional ways.
Rival powers of the day
have continually fought to possess
your rich dark earth,
your resources of forest and river,
of a populace to be taxed –
ammunition for future wars.
This morning a cat—bright orange—pawing at the one patch of new grass in the sand-and tanbark-colored leaves.
And last night the sapphire of the raccoon’s eyes in the beam of the flashlight.
He was climbing a tree beside the house, trying to get onto the porch, I think, for a wad of oatmeal
Simmered in cider from the bottom of the
He that cannot choose but love,
And strives against it still,
Never shall my fancy move,
For he loves ‘gainst his will;
Nor he which is all his own,
And can at pleasure choose,
When I am caught he can be gone,
And when he list refuse.
Nor he that loves none but fair,
For such by all are sought;<br
Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise,
Weaved in my lone devout melancholy,
Thou which of good hast, yea, art treasury,
All changing unchanged Ancient of days.
But do not with a vile crown of frail bays
Reward my Muse’s white sincerity ;
But what Thy thorny crown gain’d, that give me,
A crown of glory, which
I came to know I am so bad,
This is the reason why I am sad.
I hurt them and I always fight,
That’s why my days are not so bright.
I can’t feel what others feel
And want them under my heels.
I am selfish, I am harsh
Break intentions and their hearts.
I misunderstand, I misbehave,
I speak
He is stark mad, who ever says,
That he hath been in love an hour,
Yet not that love so soon decays,
But that it can ten in less space devour;
Who will believe me, if I swear
That I have had the plague a year ?
Who would not laugh at me, if I should say,
I saw a
I broke at last
the terror-fringed fascination
that bound my ancient gaze
to those crowding faces
of plunder and seized my
remnant life in a miracle
of decision between white-
collar hands and shook it
like a cheap watch in
my ear and threw it down
beside me on the earth floor
and rose to my feet. I
made of
Fear pedal my feet to be absconder
Slow down by the angry teeth of ocean grit
Crab, lobster, and clam are no more here
They said to be hidden by the goddess
And replaced them with a scourge of complexity
Is this Lagos Bar Beach that I know?
It is me the heir to your throne
Her ears seem far away
Born in Wuhan, China, December 2019
A deadly disease that ravages the world
Are you born out of the scientific experimental power of psychological war?
Have you birthed out the exploration of mankind?
Or
Are you a natural disease occurring to mankind?
Nations are locked up by you
The contagious disease that shakes the world
Everyone becomes masquerades:
Kings and
Hark! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings,
And Phoebus ‘gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chalic’d flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes;
With everything that pretty is,
The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crispéd and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir—
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the
O BLUSH not so! O blush not so!
Or I shall think you knowing;
And if you smile the blushing while,
Then maidenheads are going.
There’s a blush for want, and a blush for shan’t,
And a blush for having done it;
There’s a blush for thought, and a blush for nought,
And a blush for just begun it.
O sigh not
I am an honest African,
Do not think of me otherwise.
I am not of mixed lineage,
Neither on my mother’s nor father’s side.
However fine other lineage may be,
I am not sprung from it.
I am no Arab nor a European,
I am not of Indian descent.
No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kissed
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
For shade to shade will
Old pirates, yes they rob I
– sold I to the merchant ships;
minutes after they took I
from the bottom-less pit.
But my hand was made strong
by the hand of the Almighty;
we forward in this generation
– triumphantly.
.
Won’t you help to sing these songs of freedom?
’cause all I ever had: redemption songs, redemption songs.
What god will catch me
when I’m down, when I’ve taken
sufficient drink to reveal
myself, when my words are little
more than a blurring
of consonant and vowel?
I’m drunk on spring:
branches of waxy leaves that
greet me at my driveway,
a family clutching
trays of sweets.
How can I sing of this?
