The President responds to the British High Commissioner – a poem.

This poem is included in my book Guerrilla Country. It explores the way language and assumptions can differ between peoples and places. In this case, the president of an unnamed African country is responding to what was probably well-meant but misplaced – and perhaps somewhat arrogant – advice from the British High Commissioner, who doesn’t seem to have grasped the political realities in the country where he has been posted.

The President responds to the British High Commissioner

You say a weed’s a harmless plant that chance 
has placed where we’d prefer it not to grow;

that time and tides, fair winds and lucky stars
guide fishing fleets dispersed by storms, to home.

Your country is an island, so you speak
in images of sailing and the sea;

your people love their gardens: every weekend—
when they’ve time—they dig and sow and weed.

We have no shores: our meagre land’s enclosed 
by other lands. We till it to survive;

weeds steal the water, space and sun we need. 
And so we bear down hard and root out those 

who’d do us harm. We don’t wait for the tide;
and keep a sharpened blade at hand, for weeds.