Eminences Blanches (Rwanda: New Orleans) Poem by Richard George

They crawled to Lake Kivu
where their only water biered corpses
runnelled by the border's knife,
leaching cholera.

No car, and you're nobody,
up to your neck in sewage.
The gas-guzzlers have left town.
Race, in a Wal-Mart trolley.

The tribal chief sits back
behind the face-mask of a TV screen.
His conscience is being immunized,
not a pin-prick.

Ten years on, and camera-vultures
flap, flap with mobile phones.
The hard drive of death records
a whisper: 'Plus ca change'.