When you have Emptied our Calabashes

When you have emptied our calabashes
Into your porcelain bowls overflowing
the surplus spilling and seeping
into foreign soil
when you have cleaved the heads of our young
and engraved upon the soft papyrus there
an erasure of our past
having built edifices to your lies
filled them with so many bad books and distorts
and sealed the cracks in the structure
with some synthetic daub,
when you stock and pile arms
and talk about the nuclear theatre
want to make the world your stage
limiting the chance of world survival
if confirms your calculations, your designs
your ambitions which we’ll thwart
which we’ll resist
which we’ll fight in all manner of ways.

We will rebuild
we will choose our most knowing
most eloquent old women
to spit in the mouths
of the newborn babies
so that they will remember
and be eloquent also
and learn well
the lessons of the past
to tell their grandchildren
so that if you come again
in another time
with your trinkets and arms
with porcelain bowls
and scriptures
they will say
we know you.

-Iyamide Hazeley