Black Midwives Poem by George Samuel

An ashes hill
We receive no soul
Instead our summer came rattling in the field
Like fresh scent of cotton and wool
With a certain place of African canteen
Where the coffee speaks pidgin
And the grasshopper works in green
Shepherd by those suitably drunk with gin
Down the festival road
Some have lived and slept
Brave enough to venture abroad
Such were the African ritual that wept
Wore the royal black in sack clothes and ashes
To a city far from our race
Now forgotten like old rags and rashes
By the midwives of our place
Can their infants ever dream
To cater for their fathers sweat in one stream