The Street

Built to please the eye and sub-serve the foot
our streets are no longer beauty's domain.
With dust untamed by asphalt, grass or tar
without pavement, foot-path, embankment
Portholes filled and re-filled with loose red earth,
our streets were open and foetid trash cans.

Man traps, roads unworthy of vehicles.
Shops spill their plastic contents
like dismen bered pregnant uteri -
Blood, foeral parts, liquor and all.

The street is an extension of homes.
It is market, battlefield, play-pen, too.
It is the living, dining and guest room.
The street is unforgiving, and, for some
It is bridal suite and the final berth.

Accra, 22 March, 1997
Lade Wosornu
Journey without end and other poems

...einbisschen ghanaische Lyrik...