Yesterday, 08:24 PM
(This post was last modified: 8 hours ago by RiverNotch.)
Africa
1. Delenda Est
First the verdure that was the Sahara then
a city for growing figs, a country for hosting
nonbelievers, that same country's harbors,
experiments in empire, vain dictators:
here you will always find some thing that cries
"destroy me!" and the universe's answer,
only what portion now maintains this echo?
2. Cabo Verde
The Mansa's ambition to find what long ago
Plato envisioned, what Erikson later found,
and what even later Columbus would despoil,
led him to gather Mali's nascent wealth
and purchase a fleet of ships, recruiting men
from all around the coast to be their crew.
At first, the winds blew straightly and steadily west
but then each day the sun climbed up the sky
lower and lower, Polaris drew nearer and nearer,
until they feared that they were trapped in a gyre
soon to restore them far too early home.
They were about to try and change their tack
when from the prow of their foremost a shout
rang even to the aftmost of the file:
"Land ho!" The sailors, at their captains' nod,
scrambled to skirt around the sight and find
safe harbor for their barks, only they spied
along a line of sand between the sea
and endless laurel forests familiar signs:
either from native stone or wood carved out
stood haloed crosses. To these Blessed Isles
they had been bested by some Irish jack.
3. Sénégal
Resistance to this foreign way of life
would have continued if another way
had not gone past intrusion through the trade
of human lives for manufactured goods
into conquest, a struggle borne through arms
more than through preaching ending not with vengeance
but with a lasting reprieve, the squabbling neighbors
sensing much greater harm in competition.
And now, in this part of the world, Islam is seen
as brotherhood's beating heart, while the Holy Rood,
raised for a Man who declared he came not with peace
but with a gleaming sword, is a dismal record
of depopulation through mass enslavement followed
by an abundantly pointless imperial project.
Wherefore, to those that denigrate, a question:
what kaftan passes through tall grass unstained?
4. The Congo
One theory goes that sunlight, when absorbed
by naked skin, transforms into nutrition
that helps a man grow tall, and in the dense
rainforests of these banks, such light could barely
enter the growth, the people turning "pygmy",
only in part through such a thoughtless name
they're often seen as less than people---some
would chain them up for work, while others even
as cattle may be butchered to be eaten
for senseless slaughter---better to remember
how in their vivid tapestry of tongues
they're fond to call themselves: Batwa, Bambuti,
Baka, Bongo, Bambenga, and Bakola.
5. Namibia and Botswana
Consider these two desert countries, neither
having much value in terms of their position
nor (when first by their colonial masters
spotted) in terms of nature's hardly hidden
gifts, today more stable than their neighbors
yet only one's more prosperous, the poorer
still caught up in the games its masters played,
facing first genocide then apartheid,
the richer completely superfluous---the former
never within its borders finding wealth,
the latter after freedom striking gems.
Stability is simply never catching
so much attention that what greedy empires
cast you a lurid glance still leave your borders
meek and organic, free from ethnic strife,
and what lands lie between them scarcely scoured,
whereas prosperity is just as simply
the luck of the draw, the proper set of cards
dealt at the proper time by a proper hand.
History, as it is, has little greatness
except in its consequences, in the burdens
carried by its survivors and their offspring.
6. Tithonus, King of Kings
The giant asked the god to be immortal
but not to be divine, neither to lie
nor sit nor stand nor even leap beyond
the limits of this flesh, for he knew well
Eos could offer one thing or another
but never both. To live as an idea
means vanishing in the instant that the mind
which spawned you passes into another room,
to live forever is to be the earth
on which all other lives proceed in courses
both more abrupt and worthier to take:
still, he could not conceive of any horror
greater than that of death, not even the body
withered so much that only the jaws, the throat,
the shoulders, the chest, and the diaphragm could move,
which is how both his offspring came to favor
risking their youth for senseless causes, Memnon
fighting to save a city he knew was doomed,
Alcides on the road to achieve his labors
by Emathion blocked, the noble line
that towering over all their Ethiopian
subjects governed as emperors cut short.
1. Delenda Est
First the verdure that was the Sahara then
a city for growing figs, a country for hosting
nonbelievers, that same country's harbors,
experiments in empire, vain dictators:
here you will always find some thing that cries
"destroy me!" and the universe's answer,
only what portion now maintains this echo?
2. Cabo Verde
The Mansa's ambition to find what long ago
Plato envisioned, what Erikson later found,
and what even later Columbus would despoil,
led him to gather Mali's nascent wealth
and purchase a fleet of ships, recruiting men
from all around the coast to be their crew.
At first, the winds blew straightly and steadily west
but then each day the sun climbed up the sky
lower and lower, Polaris drew nearer and nearer,
until they feared that they were trapped in a gyre
soon to restore them far too early home.
They were about to try and change their tack
when from the prow of their foremost a shout
rang even to the aftmost of the file:
"Land ho!" The sailors, at their captains' nod,
scrambled to skirt around the sight and find
safe harbor for their barks, only they spied
along a line of sand between the sea
and endless laurel forests familiar signs:
either from native stone or wood carved out
stood haloed crosses. To these Blessed Isles
they had been bested by some Irish jack.
3. Sénégal
Resistance to this foreign way of life
would have continued if another way
had not gone past intrusion through the trade
of human lives for manufactured goods
into conquest, a struggle borne through arms
more than through preaching ending not with vengeance
but with a lasting reprieve, the squabbling neighbors
sensing much greater harm in competition.
And now, in this part of the world, Islam is seen
as brotherhood's beating heart, while the Holy Rood,
raised for a Man who declared he came not with peace
but with a gleaming sword, is a dismal record
of depopulation through mass enslavement followed
by an abundantly pointless imperial project.
Wherefore, to those that denigrate, a question:
what kaftan passes through tall grass unstained?
4. The Congo
One theory goes that sunlight, when absorbed
by naked skin, transforms into nutrition
that helps a man grow tall, and in the dense
rainforests of these banks, such light could barely
enter the growth, the people turning "pygmy",
only in part through such a thoughtless name
they're often seen as less than people---some
would chain them up for work, while others even
as cattle may be butchered to be eaten
for senseless slaughter---better to remember
how in their vivid tapestry of tongues
they're fond to call themselves: Batwa, Bambuti,
Baka, Bongo, Bambenga, and Bakola.
5. Namibia and Botswana
Consider these two desert countries, neither
having much value in terms of their position
nor (when first by their colonial masters
spotted) in terms of nature's hardly hidden
gifts, today more stable than their neighbors
yet only one's more prosperous, the poorer
still caught up in the games its masters played,
facing first genocide then apartheid,
the richer completely superfluous---the former
never within its borders finding wealth,
the latter after freedom striking gems.
Stability is simply never catching
so much attention that what greedy empires
cast you a lurid glance still leave your borders
meek and organic, free from ethnic strife,
and what lands lie between them scarcely scoured,
whereas prosperity is just as simply
the luck of the draw, the proper set of cards
dealt at the proper time by a proper hand.
History, as it is, has little greatness
except in its consequences, in the burdens
carried by its survivors and their offspring.
6. Tithonus, King of Kings
The giant asked the god to be immortal
but not to be divine, neither to lie
nor sit nor stand nor even leap beyond
the limits of this flesh, for he knew well
Eos could offer one thing or another
but never both. To live as an idea
means vanishing in the instant that the mind
which spawned you passes into another room,
to live forever is to be the earth
on which all other lives proceed in courses
both more abrupt and worthier to take:
still, he could not conceive of any horror
greater than that of death, not even the body
withered so much that only the jaws, the throat,
the shoulders, the chest, and the diaphragm could move,
which is how both his offspring came to favor
risking their youth for senseless causes, Memnon
fighting to save a city he knew was doomed,
Alcides on the road to achieve his labors
by Emathion blocked, the noble line
that towering over all their Ethiopian
subjects governed as emperors cut short.