The Five Quintets by O'Siadhail Micheal;

Author:O'Siadhail, Micheal; [O'Siadhail, Micheal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POE005020 Poetry / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, HIS037030 History / Modern / General, REL070000 Religion / Christianity / General
Publisher: Baylor University Press
Published: 2018-07-18T00:00:00+00:00

(iv)

Histories of top and underdog—

Why this human need to dominate?

Call it by whatever name we will:

Empire, colony, protectorate,

Rome or Turk, or Spain’s conquistador.

Must we rule what we don’t understand—

Driven by a dread of difference,

Fear of all we name barbarians,

Strangers in their speech and in their gods?

Maybe to dispel our fear we demonise

Others, sure that we are worthier

And as such are bound to conquer them.

Yet our civilising missions merge

With rapacity to justify

Plundering resources we desire.

Europe’s nation-states now vie for power,

Scrambling colonies in Africa.

All now see the conquering hero come,

One cold determined Cecil Rhodes

Whose boyhood motto is “to do or die,”

Sickly parson’s son who for his health

Is despatched to southern Africa

Where his elder brother Herbert digs

Diamond claims before he’ll turn to gold.

Darwin had put paid to God, though he’d

Give a deity a sporting chance;

Yet his nature still demanded dreams

To instil some meaning in his life.

Kipling asks “If you can trust yourself,”

Elgar’s Land of Hope and Glory calls.

Empires need their heroes and Rhodes knows

Anglo-Saxons are the only race

Who’ll civilise the world. To spread their power

Serves this earth of ours as best we can.

Rhodes desires to paint the world map red.

Call me ruthless if you will, I serve

Empire. Among the fights and feuds of digs

I amass a fortune merging claims.

Natives steal—we strip them when we search—

Though they swallow diamonds we will purge

Random workers whom we quarantine,

Padlocking them in mittens to be sure.

My De Beers becomes the diamond king;

Money is the key to power I want

For my dreams and straddle Africa.

Loner, buttoned-up misogynist,

Awkward when just wishing friends good night—

Feelings Cecil pours into his dreams.

Each return to Britain leaves him bored

But in the Cape again he’s thinking big;

People must fit into larger plans,

He only sees the woods and not the trees.

Fair or foul, two things I want to merge:

Diamond trade, South Africa itself.

Life for me is brief; I dream up trains

Running right from Cairo to the Cape.

Portugal is pressing from the east,

Germans from the west, but red must spread

North to annex Matabeleland.

Lobengula, warrior king, we’ll lure

To concede his country’s mining rights.

I persuade and play each party off;

London grants charters, though we cheat

Overstating what both granted us—

Empire and commercial interest meld.

Matabeleland we now invade.

Volunteers stake out the stolen land—

Dispossessed the Ndebele told

Not to trespass on what’s white man’s soil.

Rhodes doles out rich land to favoured youths.

Lobengula’s herds are spoils of war;

Boundaries vague, all livestock loot,

Cattle hustlers raid Ndebele kraals.

Shona from Shonaland join in

Robbing back what Ndebele robbed.

Priests stir up their people to rebel;

At secluded farms or trading stores

Sudden massacres of whites occur.

Rhodes obsessed now wants to teach

Natives to behave, tells his officers

“Show no mercy, just kill all you can.”

Ndebele flee to hide in caves.

Lobengula either killed himself

Or submitted to a broken heart.

When the Shona too start to rebel,

Fearing the political fallout,

Rhodes persuades this people to make peace,

Promising new native settlements.

Matabeleland, Mashonaland

Merge in one new country painted red,

Named Rhodesia after Cecil Rhodes.

Heart attacks I suffered all my life.

Faithful to my childhood motto I

Did before I died and used my wealth

To extend Victoria’s domains,

Drive her empire north through Africa.

Bury me on top of Matopos,

No date or detail on my tomb’s brass plate.

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