Best Africa Poems

The Peace Warrior Of Mzansi, among heroes - a colossus!
Sun Of The Nation; a rare gift of Providence.
Once, entangled in the web of racist succubus;
Unruffled he declares before High Justice:
...

In Hawaii they Hula
They Tango in Argentina
They Reggae in Jamaica
And they Rumba down in Cuba,
...

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
...

With promise of job,
he lured her into a cane field.
His gentleness a veil of sanity.
Lurking in his mind,
...

I saw a little elephant standing in my garden,
I said 'You don't belong in here', he said 'I beg you pardon?',
I said 'This place is England, what are you doing here?',
He said 'Ah, then I must be lost' and then 'Oh dear, oh dear'.
...

What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
...

Homage to Kenneth Koch


If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my dirty Iran
...

O fleece, that down the neck waves to the nape!
O curls! O perfume nonchalant and rare!
O ecstasy! To fill this alcove shape
With memories that in these tresses sleep,
...

Millions queued in lines before Arbiter Of Disputes.
Hopes were high,
Duty and resolve holding firm.
Hearts dance with spirit of Emancipation,
...

Love is all embracing,
Pure and sublime
Which flows and keeps flowing
Like a never ending stream;
...

The sun sought thy dim bed and brought forth light,
The sciences were sucklings at thy breast;
When all the world was young in pregnant night
Thy slaves toiled at thy monumental best.
...

January 1912, Mzansi brought forth a child 
In a harsh political climate 
Destined to free her people
Bound to cruel Fate
...

A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
Of Africa, Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
...

In their faces a colourless gaping of life's adversity:
the hopeless grief of a hellish existence;
Malnourished, starving, filth and olfactory horrors;  
Their humiliating nothingness clothed in rags;
...

Dance, dance!
With the muse of Africa;
Tap, tap!
With the rhythm of Africa;
...

Preludium

The shadowy Daughter of Urthona stood before red Orc,
When fourteen suns had faintly journey'd o'er his dark abode:
His food she brought in iron baskets, his drink in cups of iron:
...

Through the pregnant universe rumbles life's terrific thunder,
And Earth's bowels quake with terror; strange and terrible storms break,
Lightning-torches flame the heavens, kindling souls of men, thereunder:
Africa! long ages sleeping, O my motherland, awake!
...

The Sun woke me this morning loud
and clear, saying "Hey! I've been
trying to wake you up for fifteen
minutes. Don't be so rude, you are
...

Colonialism in its last moments is pushed to the centre stage -
the recoiling phenomenon intensely illuminated
by The Flame Of Liberty.
Roused by the prospect of emancipatory freedom,  
...

Mist clogs the sunshine.
Smoky dwarf houses
Hem me round everywhere;
A vague dejection
Weighs down my soul.
...

Three of us afloat in the meadow by the swing,
Three of us abroad in the basket on the lea.
Winds are in the air, they are blowing in the spring,
And waves are on the meadow like the waves there are at sea.
...

<i>1856</i>

Paris, from throats of iron, silver, brass,
Joy-thundering cannon, blent with chiming bells,
...

Where would we go if told to leave
This land where our kidnapped forefathers grieved
For life as it once were
And not as destiny's mind perceived
...

He lies near to death
Dying in the dust
Broken and forgot.
...

And here face down beneath the sun
And here upon earth's noonward height
To feel the always coming on
The always rising of the night:
...

AFRICA

I will sing you a song of Los. the Eternal Prophet:
He sung it to four harps at the tables of Eternity.
...

.
Our beautiful children are dying
In Africa, Europe, the Middle East
Asia, the Americas,
...

Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west died away;
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;
In the dimmest North-east distance dawned Gibraltar grand and grey;
...

Wrapped in shinny wrappers,
golden, red, silver and brown,
chocolate, the king of sweets,
everyone's favorite treat,
...

Those who passed from this door
Were negroes
With centuries-old ethos permeating
Their swarthy bodies.
...

A photograph appeared on the cover of TIME magazine in 1994...a malnourished dying child trying to crawl to a UN aid post a kilometer away...watched over by a vulture just waiting for the child to die...


Kevin Carter zoomed his camera lens, that day in’94,
...

So I go
…..smile all of friend and foe.
.….the time has come to depart
…..be off a must that do us part.
...

O Great Spirit,
You who in Your form of the Chapungu,
the great eagle with sharper eye than any aeroplane,
watches over us and knows all things;
...

White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
...

It’s the Africa in me
that loves the forest in which I wake,
that sees and hears its fauna and flora and revels in their names.
...

INFANTRY COLUMNS

We're foot--slog--slog--slog--sloggin' over Africa --
Foot--foot--foot--foot--sloggin' over Africa --
...

SINGING my days,
Singing the great achievements of the present,
Singing the strong, light works of engineers,
...

Not because im black.
But because my heart warms
And tears run down my face
When i think about AFRICA.
...

1. Then the Inhabitants of those Cities:
Felt their Nerves change into Marrow
And hardening Bones began
In swift diseases and torments,
...

This is the wind, the wind in a field of corn.
Great crowds are fleeing from a major disaster
Down the green valleys, the long swaying wadis,
Down through the beautiful catastrophe of wind.
...

THE FIRST BOOK

I, WHO erewhile the happy Garden sung
By one man's disobedience lost, now sing
...

When you wear a cloudy collar and a shirt that isn't white,
And you cannot sleep for thinking how you'll reach to-morrow night,
You may be a man of sorrows, and on speaking terms with Care,
And as yet be unacquainted with the Demon of Despair;
...

O TAKE my hand, Walt Whitman!
Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds!
Such join'd unended links, each hook'd to the next!
...

Dedicated To a South African poet on Poemhunter...Cindy Kreiner Sera

With carefully chosen words she draws,
On an African canvas which she adores,
...

PROLOGUE

There's something in a flying horse,
There's something in a huge balloon;
...

PROUD music of the storm!
Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies!
Strong hum of forest tree-tops! Wind of the mountains!
...

to the memory of my friend SI-YA-U,
whose head was cut off in Shanghai

A CLAIM
...

She is great, great and great
Chanting the greatness of truth
Hereby I declare that she is
A great noble poetess!
...

I have never been to Africa
I have only seen programs on TV

Verdant jungles teeming with wildlife
...

But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
...

To
visit Africa,
to spend time
to notice
...

(dedicated to people who love sports)

citius
altius
...

Freedom fighter or terrorist? Depends whose side you’re on,
Africa’s ‘freedom fighters’… proud pirates everyone,
No freedom was ever gained for Black folk’s kith or kin,
Their fight was not for liberty, but to loot now from within.
...

CANTO 1

ARGUMENT
Angelica, whom pressing danger frights,
...

Burning! Burning! Whole world is burning
Erased ghettos, razing down skyscrapers
Mowed out farms, fields and meadows
Smoldering woods, thickets and vines
...

The wheel of the quivering meat
conception
Turns in the void expelling human beings,
Pigs, turtles, frogs, insects, nits,
...

Born in the famine struck Africa
Living at the age of five
You told me mother,
That I was lucky to be alive.
...

The unrelated paragraphs of morning
Are forgotten now; the severed heads of kings
Rot by the misty Thames; the roses of York
And Lancaster are pressed between the leaves
...

For the people in some parts of Asia or Africa
where a talented baby may become another Garcia Lorca

In the rough social conditions of the third world societies
...

Men fight all shapes and sizes as the racing horses run,
And no man knows his courage till he stands before a gun.
At mixed-up fighting, hand to hand, and clawing men about
They reckon Fuzzy-Wuzzy is the hottest fighter out.
...

From the west
Clouds come hurrying with the wind
Turning sharply
Here and there
...

I was born in Africa
In the war and poverty
I love Africa my country
I will save Africa.
...

I love you as a sheriff searches for a walnut
That will solve a murder case unsolved for years
Because the murderer left it in the snow beside a window
Through which he saw her head, connecting with
...

A thousand years of darkness in her face,
She turns at last from out the centurys' blight
Of labored moan and dull oppression's might,
To slowly mount the rugged path and trace
...

Bold round watermelon
ripe
as a woman's breast.
Born in
...

Come with me, hold tight my hand,
Whilst I show you my beloved land,
Africa’s blood washes through my veins,
From Bushveld glades to savanna plains.
...

The beloved’s street I avoided
In repentance of the sin in puritan desires
I held to the world my hands for alms
For songs for the beloveds of Solomon
...

Africa, Beautiful yet unappreciated
Africa, Sahara to the Atlantic
Africa, From Zulu Land to Yoruba Land
Africa, From Nile River to River Niger
...

I am a wanderer in this nomadic land,
To whom can I lend a helping hand,
To make dark lives a little lighter,
Be a bastion of peace; not a fighter.
...

'Satyagraha'
A unique Indian term,
An act of commitment,
An oath,
...

Sun burning the arid safari plains,
Dusty tracks on a dry savannah.
Constant heat, no cool welcome rains,
Inhabited land of the true Afrikaner.
...

If someday I sit on the top of this world,
Bring on changes with a single word,
Throw away hatred; spread only love,
Turn a vulture into a peaceful dove,
...

Meanwhile the new-baptized, who yet remained
At Jordan with the Baptist, and had seen
Him whom they heard so late expressly called
Jesus Messiah, Son of God, declared,
...

I gazed across the valley
at the mute, brown hills beyond,
dappled with dark, round, oaks,
that remind me of Africa's veld.
...

May the Babylonish curse
Straight confound my stammering verse,
If I can a passage see
In this word-perplexity,
...

It's true, I was idealistic when I was young
I saw everything in black and white
But now, everything's gray and complex
I fought for the seals and whales
...

1

Ye heavenly spirits, whose ashy cinders lie
Under deep ruins, with huge walls opprest,
...

If the shoe fell from the other foot
who would hear? If the door
opened onto a pure darkness
and it was no dream? If your life
...

How often in the years that close,
When truce had stilled the sieging gun,
The soldiers, mounting on their works,
...

A vulture flies on Azure blue Skies,
Africa’s ‘Cordon Bleu’ of flesh demise;
Whilst relentless sun heats up the land,
Flight feathers now by thermals fanned,
...

In Africa the wine is cheap, and it is
on St. Mark's Place too, beneath a white moon.
I'll go there tomorrow, dark bulk hooded
against what is hurled down at me in my no hat
...

If from great nature's or our own abyss
Of thought we could but snatch a certainty,
Perhaps mankind might find the path they miss--
But then 'twould spoil much good philosophy.
...

She made a scene at the wedding
Wearing a black leather miniskirt
Upstaging the livid bride
My kids thought she was exciting and cool
...

O thou who from the mountain's height
Roll'st down thy clouds with all their weight
Of waters to old Niles majestic tide;
Or o'er the dark sepulchral plain
...

The stir is the circle of fate
Chewed to remain forever awake
Meditation in mocha before its discovery
From soils in Africa the bean in Arabica
...

What's that dirty mark on the carpet in front of the TV, Mom?
That's just a shadow from tne screen, dear.

I feel sick, Mom, I must've eaten something nasty?
...

Last night, a great lute-player
as full of enthusiasm for the power of music
and its history of the human heart
as far as history recedes, as I remember him
...

One in thy thousand statues we salute thee
On all thy thousand thrones acclaim and claim
Who walk in forest of thy forms and faces
Walk in a forest calling on one name
...

Canny has always been an Irish word
to my ear, so too its cousin crafty,
suggesting not only an appreciation of close-work,
fine-making, handwrought artistry,
...

My Africa, my home
As I cast back my mind
To days before I left
Before you left me impotent
...

Experienced a third bigger earthquake recently but this poem I wrote for a smaller earthquake years ago)

My first trivial tremor experience had been in Southern Africa
And now this puny earthquake I felt in Tanzania.
...

Our voices race to the towers, and up beyond
the atmosphere, to the satellite,
slowly turning, then back down
to another tower, and cell. Quincy,
...

On March 1, 1958, four deserters from the French Army of North Africa,
August Rein, Henri Bruette, Jack Dauville, & Thomas Delain, robbed a
government pay station at Orleansville. Because of the subsequent
confession of Dauville the other three were captured or shot. Dauville
...

Ô toison, moutonnant jusque sur l'encolure!
Ô boucles! Ô parfum chargé de nonchaloir!
Extase! Pour peupler ce soir l'alcôve obscure
...

‘A’ – FOR ALPHABETS!
(THE STORY OF WRITING)
PART - I
...

I.

Upon a rock I sat-a mountain-side,
Far, far forsaken of the old sea's lip;
...

Icy mountain mornings laugh
in liquid trills.

Ridiculous puffs of fluff bounce
...

Grandpa Walt, allow me to share my thoughts
with you, if only because every time
I read “Passage to India” and come across
the phrase “passage to more than India”
...

I am that I am
A face that bears thousand tongue
Proud mother hen, shielding millions of tribes
Grand architect of billions of towering strides
...

In Robben Island
Prison of such death
No bed to sleep on
Not even plumbing
...