Jack Mapanje - The chattering wagtails of Mikuyu Prison (1993)

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The crime is how we deliberately keep out of touch,
Pretending it has nothing to do with us...

How familiar the metaphors, we think, suspecting our
House servants of having killed & eaten our pet cats!

At the University, expatriate lecturers gesticulate,
Finger the leaves of Marx to a batch of yawning students,
Nervously trying to define something or other...

Colonies of storks in flamboyant trees look down on
The valley dust and the last of the sweet bananas.

Jack Mapanje

Those ticks in the cracks of cement floors
Still testify here; the fleas in the pores
Of your desert skin, those hyenas yapping
Worse than leprous midnight dogs, those
Scorpions whose sting sings like brain
Tumour, the swarming mosquitoes and bats;
What, who won't you find here, welcome
To these Chattering wagtails of Mikuyu Prison.

Jack Mapanje