Frank Bana Poems

A crib, a growing plant, a madonna’s rocking chair,
Moving images of shooting stars and moons:
What must be prepared for her arrival?
What should properly adorn the world she finds?
...

The underfed lions in the Emperor’s palace
Pace behind iron gates on the Hill of Spring -
The pachyderms die unwatered on the banks of the Zaire
River Zoo as generations of war machines parade -
...

I’ve seen lands sunken by sun
In yellow and the pools of saltbush
Change to pavements swept in restless
And magic powders of snow
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I push Radio Botswana
It spills a kindergarten song
From the villages, call and response,
Into the hotel room
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The child that from the corpse-heap rose
Nursed by the light of faces in horror
From the stumbling-on of devil’s ditch;
Dredged of swamp and covered in ash
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I’m only looking to post this mail
I don’t know if it will get through
To the hostel where you daily seek a kind of health
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You find yourself loved
As seen by other eyes
It may be an acceptable surprise
A discovery of life
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Viewed as a glass half empty, not as a well half full
It is a small disturbance to the mind
To manage all these desert hours, with consideration
Of inheritance and legacy. And I’ll perhaps be glad
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Like pouring whiskey down a sink
Spilling coffee beans or ink
So do I drink my deeper life away
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Bikes and broken bakkies
Abandoned by a stream
Renaissance and rebirth
In the blood of a bad dream
...