The trees have abandoned the forest,

And the birds have forgotten their nest.

The baby ignores its mother’s breast,

For the dirty fingers of a guest.

Tears more than the chin can arrest

And pain, more than the heart can digest

Now bursts forth in an untamed protest

For the patriotism lying unexpressed.

There is too much here to harvest,

For this land still lays blessed

With more in which to invest.

But the workers are all on a quest

In search of foreign homes to rest

But those who remain are obsessed

With thoughts of living in the west.

Irony is indeed at its best,

For while Africa is said to be the richest,

Her children still congest to the west

To be oppressed, or as they say: to be a pest.

Africans no longer beat their chests

Against contemporary foreign conquests,

Instead, we’ve turned Africa into a jest;

Running to small boats to be compressed

In search of fulfillment for vain interests.

If we do this, we are called the smartest.

Those who die along, are mourned as the bravest,

And the survivors are celebrated as the luckiest.

Is this survival of the fittest, Or exiling of the weakest?

Musa Christopher Smart is a young Sierra Leonean poet. He currently lives and writes in Bo city (Southern Sierra Leone).