Against All Odds
AGAINST
ALL ODDS woke up this morning a continent
AGAINST ALL ODDS took one step and traversed the globe
Big step causes volcanoes all over body, which is AGAINST
ALL ODDS
AGAINST
ALL ODDS sitting in très moderne bourgeois auditorium in Asmara, Eritrea
AGAINST ALL ODDS with 500 other poetry-starved souls AGAINST
ALL ODDS a gorgeous skylight my words translated AGAINST ALL
ODDS into Triginya, hold that earpiece up to ear, Listen!
Hear!
AGAINST
ALL ODDS Eritrea, independence 1993 after thirty years’
war
AGAINST ALL ODDS HQ Reesom Haile leads parade with poems
world class
Drum rhythming az-zum az-zumming beats beating az-zum az-zum
AGAINST ALL ODDS moving dance to poetry sss sss az-zum
AGAINST ALL ODDS Conference
isn’t boring! Truly AGAINST ALL ODDS az-zum
Only very rarely boring AGAINST ALL ODDS
az-zum az-zum
AGAINST
ALL ODDS seats filled with Eritrean students, desperately
interested
And they had to pay, too! AGAINST ALL ODDS T-shirts two
dollars!
AGAINST ALL ODDS poetry optimism changes world
AGAINST ALL ODDS the Sudanese appear, Sudanese President
Beshears shows up
AGAINST ALL ODDS World Court settles Eritrean-Yemeni dispute
over Dhalak Islands
Ethiopian corpses at the front come undug, bubble out, what
do they say,
AGAINST ALL ODDS
Half million Eritreans and one million Ethiopians at Front
why not AGAINST ALL ODDS
war end?
AGAINST
ALL ODDS African Diaspora recollects in Africa’s newest,
poorest,
most fragile country
Nawal El Saadawi! Ngugi wa Thiong’o! Mbulelo Mzamane! Abdulatif Abdalla! Kofi Anyidoho! Papa Susso! Akinwumni Isola! Reesom Haile! all here! AGAINST ALL ODDS!
Shared
moment’s vision, irony-free moment, Unity Possibility
AGAINST ALL ODDS!
Under Poets’ Tree in Segennetti feel winds change, slight
but free,
AGAINST ALL ODDS
To even the odds AGAINST ALL ODDS to beat the odds
Beat the drum and beat the odds AGAINST ALL ODDS az-zum
az-zum
© 2000 Bob Holman