KINGDOM OF BELGIUM (KB): Empress Victoria needn’t swallow
 every morsel of the Congo,

but leave a slice for our Emperor Leopold.

FRENCH REPUBLIC (FR): He sees rubber as black gold,

but mustn’t work Congolese into coffins.

KB: Unquestionably! Slavery fathers sins.

KINGDOM OF PORTUGAL (KP): Europeans

should be Christians, not merely Caucasians.

UNITED KINGDOM (UK): Well-born whites!

UNITED STATES (US): Well-qualified whites!

UK: Oxford-taught blue-bloods must rule Africa.

We’re unconquerable.

KB: Save for at Isandlwana….

UK: That Zulu ‘Victory’ was a miracle

wrought by Hubris – an error, tactical.

US: In any event, there was a slaughter.

UK: I hear no matter warranting laughter.

Recall: We torched your White House to smithereens.

US: And we whupped your ass at New Orleans….

KP: We scent the stink of History.

KB: What does Belgium want? No mystery:

Nothing too swollen; nothing we can’t digest.

.

UK: One piece of wedding cake? Next: The rest?

GERMAN FEDERATION (GF): The dogs of War are nervous!

Shakespeare’s bulldogs bark, howl, at every mouse.

UK: Her Majesty has no corpse tendencies.

GF: If Peace is not agreed, we seed maggots, flies,

and the English Channel becomes a decayed sea.

US: Divvy up copper, diamonds, the rubber tree.

Put away gunboats and barbed wire.

FR: A real peace treaty must require

Dissipation of Irregularities:

No more poaching each other’s colonies

like dogs scrapping over bones.

US: The answer is more and more free-trade zones,

thus ending land-grabs, pillages,

unruly borders, ethnic-cleansed villages….

UK: What Hypocrisy! Admit that you make all

South America, outside Brazil (late of Portugal),

your de facto colonies. Uncle Sam’s a cancer!

GF: Colonies provide illicit Capital transfer

to empires; Plunder makes Europe ‘triumphant.’

FR: This Hurt requires disinfectant!

GF: But a treaty can’t be journalistic flimflam.

KP: Respect Ek Chuah, the ‘God of Trade.’

GB: You parrot the mantra of Uncle Sam.

US: Properly-coloured maps must now be made.

KB: We want to ship rubber, rum, sugar, diamonds,

ornaments, copper pots, sugar….

FR: And bust female savages’ hymens.

US: The problem with John Bull is

the troublesome rotundity of his

belly, a bloating that never sags.

KB: And the spider’s branching legs,

straddling the globe.

US: Threatening all with bulging crevices

of graves, an atlas of abyss upon abyss.

UK: You know that well, America!

Cadavers piled up – blue and grey ca-ca;

the fallen, heaped uniforms, ungainly.

GF: Nothing’s as unbudging as a cemetery.

FR: Colonialism is a glorified Infection.

KB: Diamonds render Congo dirt a confection.

GF: Forego this unforeseen Anatomy

before it becomes an autopsy.

All of us have a need for a necessary

swelling: The point is to distribute equally

the ‘beer monopoly,’ so to speak.

Excuse the metaphor. We want no mystique.

Split Africa smartly, and no party needs arms,

but only hands to work factories and farms….

[Peterborough (Ontario) 27 novembre mmxv]

George Elliott Clarke is Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate.