Ballad Of The Peace-Keeper 
i
shantali, the seasons of man
revolve like the hinges of forever
sometimes recoil and thrust
like the heaves of the mamba
and even when the tablets of omens
have midwifed clouds of calm
and the guns lie smoking but stilled
where is the peace?
when they trussed you up in mogadishu
and the dungeons clenched your silences
how did it feel?
but to ask that maybe is to query
the perimeters of silence
engulfing the regions of death
 
to count the diameters of canine bites
as squelching spirits
what reels then shall be left
the statistician?
in our marketplaces  we have known also
the seasonal reclamations of the mute
the huge crackles of little tinders
- like ashikodi the head-walker
tending his caravan of fowls
but wherein the eruptions of seasoned wisdom?
now you too know, shantali
that slavery also spans the battle-field
and what answers can slavery
tender to liberation?.
 
ii
“the stentorian enforcement
was the first shudder
they took us away
from the parade-ground
they took us away
from its serene familiarities
pronounced the sentence of the blue helmets
and despatched us to our fate
soldiers of the new agenda for peace
i awoke anew
in the killing fields of mogadishu
brother against brother
clan against clan
squabbles dimmed in ancestral blood
and fled was the patriach of the apocalypse
fled from the slime and blood
of his convolutions
fled into the furtive refuge
of his brother hunchback
where is the peace we have come to keep?
to enumerate the limbs and shrapnels
of twilight massacres
to ponder the ghosts and skeletons
of mid-noon carnage
to beat the bush for red-cross syrups
are these then the agenda for peace?
every helmet, therefore, his own agenda
now I half-know why the veterans
whistle 'sarajevo, my love'
with all the immense gravity of nostalgia
they frighten me:
these staccatos from doomed tabernacles
these fatal sacraments promising no absolution
but will i someday also whistle
'o mogadishu1 my love’
like the vetenans?
 
iii
"home at last was where the shadows
overtook my flight
at first in the wei9hty absence
among the welcoming throng
and finally in the confirmation:
'private umoru shantali, bereaved
in the cause of peace'
b-e-r-e-a-v-e-d?
suffocations upon phantom footsteps
anticipations upon vanishing promises
so when does my heart cease to beat?
maIumfashi, where is mallama?
where the life i left behind
in your slittery marrows?
death is a treachery, mairo
it has deposed you from me
but you are the great death
greater to me than all the grim litanies
of sarajevo and mogadishu
yet shall you be the greater resurrection
when, someday, the requiems have dried up
the tears of my mosques
maIumfashi, where is mairo?
i have combecl the inner regions
of the north
hooted through the dense zones
of the south
an echo voiceless with loss
a howl pitchless with sorrow
now i hear your voice also
in the shudders of the corn-woman
see your dimples in the bosom
of the milkmaid
hear your injunctions in the desideratum
of the mullah
and at last it has come home to me
- the lesson of mogadishu:
the brotherhood of man
the affinities of anguish
for these we must keep the peace
o mogadishu, my love"
 
iv
and you shall
make the next mission, shantali
johannesburg. gaza. monrovia. kigali
the world is up in flames
a great feeder factory for headline ruins
it is the bleak new age
for soldiers sans frontiers
shrunk, the globe, to a tortoise shell
salvation no longer is personal
and even if great sometimes
are the errors in the cause of peace
greater even is the sin of inertia
even i can tell that the baftle-field
knows no terms of reference
but it is only the roles that blur
not the spirit
the spirit: that latitude to be
therein lies the peace that must be kept
it is also a great new age, shantali
when the cries of sarajevo
can possess the world
and the spurts of mogadishu
shiver down the spine of the globe
there is politics in its innards
yes, there is politics
but there is compassion too
and that which is greater
is the soul of the brave new world.