Africa ~ An Easter Tragedy (published poem)

Eddie Cross from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, regularly (at great personal risk) sends newsletters to family and friends telling them truthfully, about the state of his existence in times of terrible hardship which the outside world has no concept of. He's a true hero!

A newsletter sent by Eddie Cross from Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) on 2nd April 2007 which appeared on the Great North Road Bulletin Board, inspired this poem.

An Easter Tragedy
-----------------

At the Magistrate’s Court in Harare, a crowd gathered outside
weeping for men and women who carry an invisible cross.

Thousands have suffered at the hands of baton-wielding zealots,
masquerading as Police, in a land where lives have little price.

Is this commercialism gone mad? Trading in muscle and limbs
feeding their families with the blood of countrymen and women?

Who weeps for Mugabe ~ he who styles himself after Jesus continually
resurrected, who pretends to heave his country away from Colonial roots?

Why should we cry for a Chinese Palace, wifely shopping sprees in Paris;
a man protected from his own voters by his army of security enforcers?

His people no longer believe he leads for them ~ have seen how he dictates,
feathers his own nest and the cronies he keeps very close ~ walled in by sin.

How long will millions of starving, beaten people wait for their turn at life,
their chance to eat, to sleep peacefully in a khaya built in prosperity and peace?

Will the tears shed this Easter encourage the world to stand up for Zimbabwe?

Frances Macaulay Forde © 2007