What is Africa to them?
Bride of the world
Their dreams wrapped in silk
Fattened cow to be milked
Spineless gecko of sheated skin

Polyandrous wife of 5 husbands
Courted by dowry of flirtatious princes
Who sold her children
For mirrors, gin and salt
Who shall contend the enemy at the gate?

What is Africa to them
She is their testing ground
Of virility, theories and armoury
A country to most
Where savages and lions roam

She is the beast
That bears the world's burden
A slate to clear their bleeding conscience
A clay that moulds white martyrs
Like Bono, Madonna and Angelina

She is the orphan of her kin
That carries the village's pregnancy
A pot of many bellies
That no one cares to wash
A basket on barefoot

What is Africa to them?
But a bowl that beholds
The teardrops of gods
A nest of brooding hawks
A cloud to circling vultures

What is Africa to me?
A snail with broken shell
Convulsed libations of mother earth
Wreaths placed on my broken dreams
Drowning in tomorrow's stream