By Lloney E. Monono
it’s true
it was rape and pillage
wooden yokes embraced muscular necks
wrought iron shackled sturdy ankles
and manacled muscular wrists
of beings, bare bodied, bought and sold
to become beasts of burden
two centuries hence
the resource loot continues
so does the rape of manpower
yet restraints are redundant
as patient queues now adorn pavements
for an inky access to become beasts -
beasts to a burden
the potential of lands
abandoned in perennial potentiality
wrought by no chains or crackle of cane
yet the parking attendant with a PHD
and ten miles worth of tickets
fizzles a lifetime of education
as beast to an alien burden
echoes of screaming mothers
rudely parted with sons of strength
a heart-rending dislocation of the family then
but now, gentle pleas of ‘please, please don’t forget us’
see, the roof still needs mending
the village needs a new town hall
the harvest could do with an extra hand
but go, Godspeed … join the others … our seed
now beasts of a foreign burden
Lloney Monono lives in England. He is the author of of Dance of Scorpions, a poetry collection, and Beyond the Promise a play on student political activism, palace intrigues and a coup d’etat in a fictitious African country. The play was inspired by the political turmoil that gripped Africa in the early 1990s.
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