Archive for May, 2010

Baia Dos Tigres, Angola – A Poem

Baia Dos Tigres, Angola
© Garth Dutton 2010

I can envisage a bay
with shifting tides and currents,
and tiger stripes of sandbars.
The name suggests to sailors
that they sail into the bay
as one would walk into a jungle
in which it was known
there were tigers.
The name also shows
that the Portuguese Navigators
knew what tigers were
long before they reached India.

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Saturday, May 22nd, 2010 Poetry No Comments

Cape Verde – A Poem

Here is a poem that is part of a series of poems inspired by Portuguese place names on the African coast

Cape Verde
© Garth Dutton 2010

After the long, long sail
down the Sahara Coast,
they came to a Cape that was green.
Not just green,
but verdant green.
So green,
it was like an emerald
at the edge of the sea

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Friday, May 21st, 2010 Poetry No Comments

Eugene Terreblanche – A Poem

My latest poem is called Eugene Terreblanche and it’s about the Afrikaner Resistance Movement leader who was killed in South Africa a couple of weeks ago. His movement had been demanding that an all- white ‘ homeland’ be set up somewhere in South Africa.

Eugene Terreblanche

© Garth Dutton, 2010

A South African
of French Huguenot descent,
Afrikaner Resistance Movement leader
Eugene Terreblanche
is dead,
killed by black workers on his farm
during a bitter pay dispute.

He believed his Afrikaner ethnic group
was specially created by God
after the Creation.
Anyone who believes they are
one of God’s  Chosen People,
or a Master Race,
or Direct Descendants of the Sun God,
and so on,
is faced with one immediate problem…
‘How do they treat everyone else?’
The answer is always the same,
‘Quite appallingly.’

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Monday, May 3rd, 2010 Poetry No Comments