For Osagyefo Capitaine Thomas Sankara

By Bate Besong

Mongrelised Iscariots
Were in fact bred there.
A cruel ghommid-in-wellingtons
Wore
A canary pullover
Pulled on his putschist muffler
Dyed,
A brownish yellow

Butchered
Ceaselessly into the grey
Hours of the dawn

And if you saw him amidst the cadavers…
Eyes then, morgue-like as albino

Mfam* you throw back
Daemons
Deformed minions
Others in gandoura
In that cruellest October
In that arthritic year.

Blaise now, as if he has
Uprooted a baobab
And heaved it on his shoulder

Crouched low, eyes searching
In his new Macbethian throne
As if he is the liana
That strangles giant trees,

Now, dragging himself
On the parapet

Like a crocodile crawling on
A sandbank

Now like carrion-brained
Mannequin whose,
Half-breed mongrels

Co-puppets all
Bleached
Plotter-faces in shadow
Below

Their kepis pulled down to the crown.
. as in a harlequinary

Liege-slaughterer
In Ouagadougou
Whose mind;
Is the colour of a corpse –

Blaise Compaoré
France expects every traitor
To do his duty

Now that the bastilles
Are closed to public view.

Bate Besong

Picture courtesy of www.newint.org

Comments

[Lyndon C. Wilburg]

Much gratitude for such an appropiate tribute to our beloved brother and teacher

[WIRNDZEREM GIDEON BARFEE]

The brutal physicality of the images, and their exceptional originality, hauls home the full psychic weight of the tragedy and the portentous onus of culpabilities borne by the traitors, Blaise & Mitterand's France! it's not just a homage; it is a trenchant indictment of the 'macbethian' breed! my favorite takes:

-And if you saw him amidst the cadavers…
Eyes then, morgue-like as albino

-Blaise now, as if he has
Uprooted a baobab
And heaved it on his shoulder

Crouched low, eyes searching
In his new Macbethian throne

-As if he is the liana
That strangles giant trees,

Now, dragging himself
On the parapet

Like a crocodile crawling on
A sandbank

-Co-puppets all
Bleached
Plotter-faces in shadow
Below

Their kepis pulled down to the crown.
as in a harlequinary

-Whose mind;
Is the colour of a corpse –

-Blaise Compaoré
France expects every traitor
To do his duty