SANGE
We thought collecting black gold would make us truly free
You do not blame a woman whose belly has been empty for fifty years
If she scoops the sand onto which the gari has spilled
Hoping to sift through later
So as soon as we saw the tanker tipping over
Agonizing
Slow
Like a tortoise that had fallen on its already cracked back
Tyres spinning desperately in the air
We ran to grab our buckets rusted to a brown that was indistinguishable from the earth that barely sustained and the huts that no longer sheltered
Scoop scoop black gold that nourishes
Thick oil gurgled like blood in the throat of a man dying bad death
Spreading out a slow persistent stain that no funeral rites would wash away from our land
But to our half-starved minds delirious with third-world hunger—the kind that makes foreigners pledge ninety cents a week to send a naked child to school—the gurgling was A song
Into whose discordant melody we fused words of hope:
School fees for my children
White man is dead1for my wife
Medicine for old and food for babies
Black gold black gold
Happy day this is true independence
Scald scald black gold ignites
Split-second the song is drowned a horrible death world cup screens melted shapeless plastic flash and boom boom flash it is civil war all over again murder by first degree burns no more rust buckets no hope for white man is dead no one to cry foul oil rushes like enraged bulls flaming river engulfs sweeps into an eternal sea sang qui coule sanguine though none will hunger or thirst yet shall there be weeping no gnashing for no teeth remain
No
No
No
Black gold kills black death
The persistent stain soils my land like a baby neglected in a pit latrine thick liquid stain in which floats the solid black excrement of bodies
Charred beyond recognition
No our independence is burnt out
Charred beyond recognition
Like the profit they said black gold would bring…
By Annie Quarcoopome. Annie Quarcoopome writes at Black Looks. This poem appeared there. Thanks to Sokari Ekine, at Black Looks, for publishing and collaborating.