The African Mosquito
By Samueloption
Every night you drill on my land
Your pike in my peasant’s earth
And you leave with wells of my peasant’s blood
Indifferent to the wails and weals you plant.
Every night you sound your horn
In the hollow of my ear
Demanding a graft;
Well or weary, pay I must.
Sometimes you land as I nurse
The wounds of your last raid
Sometimes you perch when
My health has long lain fallow
And into some grove or cranny
You flee, far far from here
Across the hill and loaded with the loot
Remember, mosquito, by the same Hand
Were we forged; and the same who
Opens your eyes at night is the
Same who shuts mine at night
But you come and raid and flee
With different tunes of your nagging horn
In different colours, in different cloaks
Sucking my prostrate peasant trunk
Strengthless
Yet you bar sleep from millions’ eyes
Strengthless
Yet you are death dreaded by death
Beware, African tyrant of the dark,
The night which shields you
And blinds me, lasts but awhile as
Soon, my sun shall beam from the hills.
