Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;
[email protected])
I don’t don't how much the world is tired
Of hearing again in this year that
Still tribalism and negative ethnicity
Is Gog and magog with Africa, I mean Africa
The second largest continent in the world
After Asia, being seconded by Americas,
Her only cultural overture is tribalism and tribes
Large tribes swallowing small ones
Small tribes making desperate moves
Like bush virgin in the lethal fangs of the python,
Large tribes swallowing political fruits as the small ones
In despair look, being choked by forlorn appetite,
Tribalism, listen! Leave Africa alone; stop messing up the African youth
Tell the Dinka and the Nuer of the southern Sudan to put down the arms
The arms made in the old Russia, the AK 47,
Tell them to go to Russia not to buy
Arms but books of poetry and literature
To buy Dead souls of Nikolai Gogol and
Brothers Kamarazov of Fydor Dostoyevsky,
Tribalism, listen! Am tired of introducing myself
By my clan, I don’t want to be known by my clan
I want to be known by my work; I am a poet
I sing and chant the African incantations of freedom
I do not perpetrate feelings of tribal terror
It is never my work to cement ethnicity
Tribes are good but tribalism is evil, or satanic or impish
Or gnomic or macabarous or ghastly insidious,
As its hatred is the most heinous.