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An African Thunderstorm
& Other Poems

David Rubadiri
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Contents
An African Vigil ......................................................................... 3
The Tide that from the West Washes Africa to the Bone .... 4
An African Thunderstorm ........................................................ 5
A Negro Labourer in Liverpool ................................................ 7
Stanley Meets Mutesa ............................................................. 8
On Parting from a First White Love ...................................... 11
On Meeting a West Indian Boat Train at Waterloo Station 12
Thoughts after Work ............................................................. 14
Black child ............................................................................... 15
Ogunobas Talking drum ........................................................ 16
Kampala Beggar ..................................................................... 18
Tears ........................................................................................ 19
A Smile .................................................................................... 20
Begging Aid............................................................................. 21
Saaka Crested Cranes ............................................................. 23
Death at Mulago ..................................................................... 24
Paraa Lodge (To J. H. S) ......................................................... 25
The Prostitute ......................................................................... 26
Master of the African Night .................................................. 27
Two Epitaphs .......................................................................... 29
I. Christopher Okigbo ........................................................ 29
II. Yatuta Chisiza ................................................................. 30
The Witch Tree at Mubende .................................................. 31
Christmas 1967 ........................................................................ 32
Yet Another Song ................................................................... 34
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An African Vigil
Evening drapes gold on distant hills
As slowly along the winding footpath
I walk to meet her
My dark lady

She will be at the waterhole

Drawing the day’s last pot of water,
As I turn round the familiar bushes
My heart knows she will be there
As it has been
Since first we kept vigil

I stand and wait;

First appears the top of her pot
Then bare brown shoulders
A slender neck
Fringed with round beads
Of a fiery sunset glow,
A slow turn of dark eyes
And a lightning shadow of a smile-

That is all she ever says

That is all I wish to hear;
She steps aside to let me pass.
As I edge my way past
Her eyes meet my eyes
And for moment that lingers timelessly
Dwell on each other understandingly.
Same time tomorrow? My eyes say,
Hers: I shall not fail.
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The Tide that from the West

Washes Africa to the Bone

The tide that from the west

Washes Africa to the bone
Gurgles through my ribs
And gathers the bones
That clatter into clusters
Rough and polished
To fling them back destitute
To the desolate river-bank.

The tide that from the west

Tears through the heart sinews of Africa
Boils in my marrow
Dissolving bone and sinew

The tide that from the west

Washes the soul of Africa
And teas the morning of its spirit
Till blood red the tide becomes
And heartsick the womb –
The tide that from the west
With blood washes Africa
Once washed a wooden cross.
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An African Thunderstorm

From the west

Clouds come hurrying with the wind
Sharply turning
Here and there
Like a plague of locusts
Whirling
Tossing up things on its tail
Hurrying
Like a madman chasing nothing.

Pregnant clouds
Ride stately on its back
Gathering to perch on hills
Like dark sinister wings;
The Wind whistles by
And trees bend to let it pass.

In the village
Screams of delighted children
Toss and turn
In the din of the whirling wind.
Women-
Babies clinging on their backs
Dart about
In and out
Madly
The Wind whirls by
Whilst trees bend to let it pass.
Clothes wave like tattered flags
Flying off
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To expose dangling breasts

As jagged blinding flashes
Rumble, tremble, and crack
Amidst the smell of fired smoke
And the pelting march of the storm.
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A Negro Labourer in Liverpool

I passed him
Slouching in the dark backhouse pavement
Head bowed
Taut
Haggard
And worn
A dark shadow
Amidst dark shadows

I stared
Our eyes met
But on his dark Negro face
No sunny smile
No hope
Or a longing for hope promised only
The quick cowed dart of eyes
Piercing through impassive crowds
Searching longingly
For a face
That might flicker understanding.

This is him
The Negro labourer in Liverpool
That from his motherland
With new hope
Sought for an identity
Grappled
To clutch the fire of manhood
In the land of the free.
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Stanley Meets Mutesa

Such a time of it they had

The heat of the day
The chill of the night
And the mosquito that followed
Such was the time and
They bound for a kingdom

The thin line of carriers

With tattered dirty rags to cover their backs
The buttered bulky chests
That kept on falling of their shaven heads
Their tempers high and hot
The sun fierce and scorching
With it rose their spirits
With its fall their hopes
As each day sweated their bodies dry and
Flies clung in clumps on their sweat-scented backs
Such was the march
And the hot season just breaking

Each day a weary pony dropped

Left for the vultures on the plains
Each afternoon a human skeleton collapsed
Left for the Masai on the plains
But the march trudged on
Its khaki leader in front:
He the spirit that inspired
He the light of hope
Then came the afternoon of a hungry march
A hot and hungry march it was
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The Nile and the Nyanza

Lay like two twins
Azure across the green countryside
The march leapt on chaunting
Like young gazelles to water hole
Hearts beat faster
Loads felt lighter
As the cool water lapped their sore soft feet.
No more tales of valour when
At Mutesa’s court fires are lit

No more the burning heat of the day

But song, laughter and dance.

The village looks on behind banana groves

Children peer behind reed fences
Such was the welcome
No singing women to chaunt a welcome
Or drums to greet the white ambassador
Only a few silent nods from aged faces
And one rumbling drum roll
To summon Mutesa’s court to parley
For the country was not sure

The gate of reeds is flung open

There is silence
But a moment’s silence –
A silence of assessment.
The tall black king steps forward
He towers over the thin bearded white man
Then grabbing his lean white hand
Manages to whisper
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‘Mtu mweupe karibu’

White man you are welcome.
The gate of polished reed closes behind them
And the west is let in.
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On Parting from a First White Love

If your heart and mine

Have mingled in one act of purity
Think not then
That I that loved
Now left to remember
Ever will live to regret
The joy of one drunken month.

In the fault be not with us

But that from two worlds we came
Then let the worlds that begot us
With vengeance take the blame.

I leave steeped not in sorrow

Nor shrouded in pain
But in a gnawing bitterness
Yet blessed in that which no man
No worlds
Can take.

Think of us
Sometimes
If you must
As those odd mad rebels
That in a moment of waking
Lived.
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On Meeting a West Indian Boat

Train at Waterloo Station

Broken, you stand and dream,

Dreams you learnt
And will dream
Of new worlds to conquer
Worlds to rule
And worlds to lose.

But your dreams

Are only dreams
Colonnades of the mind
Clandestine pillars
That soon lie shattered
In fertile imaginations.

Why in space build to break

Here are no new worlds
No new truths
No new identity
But only
An old world
That speaks the same truths.

Here in the land of your dream

Chimney pots
And TV masts scrape the skies
And you –
The new burrowed humanity –
Will creep each day
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Like vermin
To work.

The sun spirit knows no prisons

Or casements of formality
But you dream of dreams
As a child builds sandcastle
To break.
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Thoughts after Work

Clear laughter of African children

Rings loud in the evening:
Here around this musty village
Evening falls like a mantle,
Gracing in all a shroud of peace.
Heavily from my office
I walk
To my village,
My brick government compound,
To my new exile.
In this other compound
I would no longer intrude.
I perch over a chasm,
Ride a storm I cannot hold,
And so must pass on quietly
The laughter of children rings loud
Bringing back to me
Simple joys I once knew.
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Black child
Why, black child
Stand you dazed?

Your eyes look

But see not
Or is it rather
That the inward fire
That burns
The clipped wings
That fly
Hold you down so
That you must only look
Blankly gaze
Far, far into the distant void?

Black child,
I see your wings
Sprout and grow
I see the dull eyes
Catch fire and glow
And then you must fly.
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Ogunobas Talking drum

Scratching fussily
Like a chicken looking for seed
Into the heart of Ibadan
Where Ogunoba lived,
Like traitors
Dagers-drwn
Yet afraid (of what?)
We knew not
We were looking for a talkin drum.

We sat
Dutifully broke a kola nut
Two worlds
East and West –
Both African

A drum,
We wanted a drum
Just a drum
Like tourists crying
For a cowrie shell.

Was this a cry,

A longing
Or a conquering wish?
Groping in the dark
Wishing to say
Something
Infinitely impulsive
Childishly silly?
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With a message
That scuffled time beyond time;
There was bargaining
Mere talk beyond time
A form without meaning,
A bed-cover for truth;
Ogunoba broke into tears
Blessing the drum
That would fly
To the East –
A prayer
Spanning the ages of definitive African politics.
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Kampala Beggar
Dark twisted form
Of shreds and cunning
Crawling with an inward twinkle
At the agonies of Africa.

Praying and pricing

Passers-by
As in black and white
Jingle pennies past.

A hawk’s eye
Penetrates to the core
On ad hoc afternoon
To prick the victims
That with a mission
Dare not look at
This conflict.

A dollar drops,
An Indian sulk
Passively avoids –
I am scabbed to the core
Pride rationally injured.

In the orbits of our experience

Our beggarness meets
With the clang of symbols,
Beggarly we understand
As naturally we both know
The Kampala beggar
Is wise.
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Tears
A drop of dew
On a rose petal
Sitting on a thorn
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A Smile
A rose bud
Opening
At the back
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Begging Aid

Whilst our children

Become smaller than guns,
Elders become big
Circus Lions
Away from home.

Whilst the manes age

In the Zoos
That now our homelands
Have become,
Markets of leftovers,
Guns are taller
Than our children.

In the beggarhood
Of a Circus
That now is home,
The whip of the Ringmaster
Cracks with a snap
That eats through
The backs of our being.

Hands stretching
In a prayer
Of submission
In a beggarhood
Of Elders delicately
Performing the tightrope
To amuse the Gate
For Tips
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That will bring home

Toys of death.
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Saaka Crested Cranes

The prison farm at Saaka

Cradles craggy trucks
Old and grey
On which pelicans perch;

Saaka they say

Is a crater lake,
Bottomless –
Ringed with banana homes
The feminine complexity
Of prison
And fertility

It was in this water of life

As the children call it
That one evening
Quiet and still
Swooped a troop of crested cranes
Ngaali on the wing,

As we held hands,
Swirling upwards
Crested high
Majestically borne
Like priests of Osiris
To nest.
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Death at Mulago

Towers of Strength
Granite
Hard concrete
Enduring
Like life itself

Up they rise
Tall and slender
And around them
White coats flit
Like the magic they spell.

New Mulago hospital

– the name shakes –
She stood firmly
On that cool afternoon
Giving names, tribes and sex,
A woman clad in busuti.

As the full stop was entered

On a white sheer of paper
A white coat gave a nod
Her hand cross her chest
And the message unsaid
Crushing granite and concrete
In gushing tears of pain
And a lonely sorrow.
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Paraa Lodge (To J. H. S)

I have walked
In the still dark hours of day
And seen elephants graze
And hippos snuggle
Shitting in the Nile;
An American party
Noisy and childishicked
Shitting in cisterns
At Paraa Lodge –
Animal seeing Animal
Each asking questions,
And nature
Rolling around
Like sea-sick billows
To the shore
In the darkness of space,
And us
Standing on tidal waves
Of engulfing life
Embracing
Not for comfort –
Watched and prayed
For an answer
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The Prostitute

I desire her
Truly, like all men
In the dark cascades
Of the Suzana desire beautiful
And seductive women;
The Congo beat
Rippled through her
Shimmering
Along a bottom
Down to her feet.

The morning of the night

Burst through my thighs
In a longing of fire –
She
Almost a goddess
Lit
In clever cascades
Of light
But in the light of another morning
After the jingle of pennies
How could I move
To stir the glue-pot?
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Master of the African Night

The sun hangs low on the hilly west

Printing long, sharp shadows
On the darkening hill slopes.
Lone weary boys
With the trudge of heavy hooves
Of morning and drowsy cows
Villageward turn

Behind smoky huts

Fires crackle and pots bubble
Whilst full-breasted girls
Feed grunting babies to sleep.
Darkness swallows day
Heaven wakes
From the dark clouds
A silver moon stares
As from the bowels of shadowy huts
Dark bodies emerges.

Softly through the night

One hears the boom-didi-boom of drums
At first slow and timid
Then strong and sustained
Thudding and thumbing urgently
Filling the night with quivering agitation
Stirring blood.

A rush of jingling feet

A clattering wave of clapping hands
Songs rising to screeching ululations.
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As rhythms twirl and writhe

To the swell and ebb of urging drums.

Then fires fade to ashes

The night chills
As one by one
The dancers dissolve into night
Leaving all quiet
For the cynical owl
To hoot his goodnight.

In the freezing darkness of the forest

Mysterious
Life is just on the wake
As an angry, malicious, contemptuous roar
Tears the night like thunder
Sending the drums to sleep

Simba –

He stands and looks

Then cynically yawns
A burning majesty
In the inky darkness of night –
Master of the African night.
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Two Epitaphs
Major Christopher Okigbo was shot dead in Biafra.
Yatuta Chisiza was shot dead in Malawi
Died that Africa may live with integrity

I. Christopher Okigbo
Heavensgate and Limits

Who can reach them?

Lead and barrels of heat
Do so easily
Youth and love
Joy and faith
Have gone through them,
And now our Limits
Because the light at Heaves Gate
Have departed
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II. Yatuta Chisiza

‘old soldiers never die’
The saying goes –
So too to Yatuta
So too to the cause
He lived for.

For us
The rank and file
Only the agony
And the pity
For a piece of lead.

There is much to remember

And little to forget
When greatness
Dies a simple death
For souls of men.
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The Witch Tree at Mubende

The Witch tree

Old and knobbly
Stood with years
Scratched by a cross
Abused
As cameras clicked
And learned tongues discoursed

Naked it stood
In its age of mysteries

Beauty and innocence

Stood there too
Side by side –
Two witches
As I saw them
Prismatic lenses prying
The old and the new –

To me she was then

The Mubende Witch Tree.
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Christmas 1967

In the void
The full emptiness
That ‘67’ has been;
Receiving and returning
Snow-piled cards
Presents and wishes
And ate turkey
And the Red Cross
Christmas Pie.

The dark skeleton

On the Oxfam card
Pleading for something
In South Africa
Vietnam
And Rhodesia

Christmas ‘67’
Teddy bears
Father Christmas
Down African chimneys
On National Television,
Hidden presents
In friends’ house
And a coup d’etat
To make it dramatic.

At 00 something hours
A queen’s message
One mile run by a native –
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Goodwill to the Commonwealth

All in the oral tradition.
Then a message
From a friend in Paris
Talking about Vietnam
And Major Schramme –
The best Christmas card
As POWER and power
Talked over jet stop
At the Vatican.

Then we sang orgasmically

Away in a Manger –
Goodwill and Peace to us all
Good Christian people.

Dry hot sands

Hot gun barrels
Dry hard hearts
Finger and trigger
Night clubs
At Mulago maternity
A bumper crop
For Christmas ‘68’
But the desert still stretching
Scorching
The camel’s hump
Still sagging with water.
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Yet Another Song

Yet another song

I have to sing:
In the early wake
Of a colonial dusk
I sang the song of fire.

The church doors opened

To the clang
Of new anthems
And colourful banners.

Like the Beatles,

The evangelical hymns
Of conversion
Rocked the world and me.
I knelt before the new totems
I helped to raise
Watered them
With tears of ecstasy.

They grew
Taller than life
Grimacing and breathing fire.

Today
I sing yet another song
A song of exile.

Compiled by C.M.K. for Matapwata Secondary School