Africa Recalled
Where, among these books that breed like flies
Are bred from a carcass in the bush,
Are the meanings which once girded our lives
And led us like supplicants
To the slaughter?
There was a special meaning, there
While bullets parted our desire
From our death
And the torrid sun lay breathing
Between the hills of mist.
It is forgotten, like the natives soon
Forgot why we the forgotten fought
Amid the mud with the flies of heat sucking
Our blood of life.
Memory, like money, fades:
Each beauty becomes dulled
Without the fulfilment
That our projected image promises
But never brings:
And our women will forever weep.
Once, words spoke but now
They speak no more
Since what was treasured is profaned
Through the profanity of use
Just as in action without thought
The wordless meaning fulfilled
And we who remained were glad
When each morning brought the news
From our body to our brains:
We are alive, still, thanks
To our gods...
How could we, as civilians, re-adjust?
Was there a meaning in clouds,
In waiting because such waiting reminds?
But there is truth in desiring desire
Which we ourselves may not
Yet always should strive to fulfil
Through the actions which endanger life
Since we have only to release our hidden self
To become that being-beyond
Which all great striving
Brings.
But
Every warrior desire breeds
Another death
While every quiet and dreary peace fulfils
From its beginnings
The sulking coward who lies in wait
Within.
DW Myatt