Springsong for Anyone
Each morning I see
The springtime coming near
I look forward to welcoming
The sunglow on my skin again
The deer and all their young
Will take the stage once more
In soft light of the dawn
Squirrels will run before the fawn
In fear towards the stream
I feel like calling out to them
I want them to stay close a-while
To celebrate with me
The turning of the page
The coming of the spring
The reason that I make this song
For anyone to sing.
[...] Read more
poem by Frank Bana
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A Strange Day
A storm broke at dawn
Trees on the power lines
Buildings were falling on the track
I was accused of raising Cuba
I never talk of Cuba
Let the Cubans take it back
A small two-legged man
Walked a big three-legged dog
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poem by Frank Bana
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Build Back Better! !
Huge red sun rising over Harlem
The pain from Haiti is finally heard
Children have been dying here for years
Each infant death an earthquake of screams
Buried far below our Richter scale
It's time, world. We can stop all this.
We can build back better, we can be
A race with things to be proud of
Worthy of our beautiful red sun
That graces the slums of Kolkota
The bright white yachts of Greenwich
The penthouses of Manhattan
And the ruins of Port-au-Prince.
poem by Frank Bana
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Taking his life - the execution of Saddam
If you think
There is any lasting meaning
Justice or fulfilment in taking the life
Of any human being, even the worst mass murderer
You have not thought
What life itself signifies
And why it is inviolable, not given out
For anyone to crush, even those most needing vengeance
Taking his life
Gives his methods just a little more validity
And treads in the first footprint of his deathly ways.
You should have trod more fitting paths of justice, even for his case.
poem by Frank Bana
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Dark Heart in Retreat...
The lone dark heart is closing
Like a failing, blinking eye
A slow evacuation
Leached & emptying away
Its content rendered overseas
To tearful foreign emissaries
Or held against compassion
Landfill, in dark repositories
The klieg lights snapping shut
Household gods locked into crates
Rolling up the prayer mat lines
Chains around the clinic gates
The camp, the shining beacon
In sly, red-faced depart
They board down their Guantanamo
And shutter the dark heart.
poem by Frank Bana
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Village Marriage Day
With a long fine cloud
She wandered slowly away
Across the yellow mouth of morning
Through another gate-head
Where the withered maize-stems made
Leaves for folded dolls.
The backyard
Should be smeared this year.
She approaches her father
His hands bloodstained
The goat’s head laid back
On its tenuous link to the body.
She looks at the goat
Turns over the night of love
Her sleek tilted head remembers
The other art of marriage
For which he said she must prepare.
poem by Frank Bana
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Lands
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
I’ve seen my body change with lands
From a free-swaying gazelle in the heat-wind
Into a suit of warmth, woven by my lover
And the drink in my hand from juice to coffee
And I’ve wondered how a tropic people
Would wake to receive a snow-covered land
Or a virgin morning’s people’s government
Unviolated by the footprints of power.
poem by Frank Bana
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Poets of Uganda (1976)
Whatever happened
To the poets of Uganda?
In the meantime –
We were as perfect as their bones could predict
We could not squander what they did not achieve
They heavy dead
We light and loving
Too human for politics
Deaf to abasement, to dictator’s fame
To the cackle of the fisted man
In the hours of giving
Please live with us, they say
Please touch us lovingly
I will be a husband to my brothers
Give you passion gently
Dwelling at your beauty
For all our poet-sakes.
poem by Frank Bana
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For the Poem Hunters, gathering in London....
our great city: magnet dusty
microcosm of worlds expansive
cultures meeting, lovers mating
in its hold of nerves ecstatic
tense with all its hopes and hatred
here in London, poets meet
hunters, posters, insight seekers
jokers, hubs and fair spokes-
persons for themselves and for all other
poets scratching for belief
light and blessings! in your smokeless
pubs turned into poetry corners
paths to gather forged and trod
by scriveners who came of old
to town to be immoderate and bold.
poem by Frank Bana
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To Womankind
Womankind, please make up your mind!
You want a man true sensitive
A vulnerable romantic type
Open to his inner self and willing there to live
And yet - is it contrarily? - you need a man protective
To keep you safe, your children well secure
To chase away the other wolves
And memories from the door
I'm just one person - not quite two - enough perhaps
For what you want... but not for all your needs
So now what happens to the rest of me,
Inadequate, the wounded part that bleeds?
poem by Frank Bana
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