Turning Love To Death Poem by Bob Bowers

I walk Mangoche's dusty roads
And wait for rain
Among the children
Gathered there
Hands outstretched,
Reaching for god
The mzungu’s
Paltry alms
Eden’s manna
Silver coins.

Once proud Nubians
Graced these shores
When rains fell free,
Before dry winds of Ra
Baked the land,
Shriveled chocolate skin
Made wide these eyes
In which their fathers died,
Burned their mothers’ ulcerated forms
Turning love to death.

I stand among them
Eat the flies nesting in their eyes
Feel my bowels spill upon the ground
Their tiny mouths
Breathe in tears of god
Rained down too late,
Tears that drown the fields of corn
Their parents sowed,
Drown the taste of life.


They gaze at me
Through this dust and filth
From which they rose.
They watch me die
Before their eyes I
Watch them
Die before their time.


1/29/2005