African Landscape Poem by Louis Kasatkin

a barely muted buzzing of flies
thousands upon thousands,
a counterpoint click-clicking
of crickets in chorus,
a crackling of flames
in the noon-day heat
scattering sheaves
of semi-charred papers
in a gentle breeze
that plays upon
flapping posters,
proclaiming in
four languages and dialects
UNESCO's 'peace&prosperity for all';
heaped up in altar-like fashion,
redundant, sacrificial juvenile faces
with eyes no longer bright
shining as the sun,
away on the miraged horizon
shapes shift and change,
a battered land-rover seems
to bullock its way toward
this stony ground whereon
seed has been spilled,
their meagre dust
caught up and weighed
and found wanting
for no reason.