Strange fruit hanging 

From the poplar trees

A shame on America

And a shame on me.

Sprung shadows surround me

As words fade like the harvest moon.

Today clouds cavort in the sky

Then sink into the flatness of an American horizon

A pallete of clattering silences

In the drift of Continental armies.

Mourning for the Union dead.

The drift towards liberty began before the Aztecs

Even before the Sioux and Comanche.

In the quiet of the cool of an African evening

We drink fermented coconut milk and hum

Ibo songs and poems in a glittering black

Mirror of night.

Eyes shut ever-tighter: so the fragrant oiled hair of our beloved

Becomes the gleaming silk of the evening

So many generations and over the far horizon

The beautiful girls still dance with their ankle bells and shells

Mirroring the scuďding clouds that race them towards eternity