In life, its conceit was this:
to wield the power of death, in vain;
to sow fertile fields with landmines
to grind out a generation of orphans
maimed in body and mind;
to fill a war’s front line
with uncomprehending child killers.

In his stronghold, the living man stage-managed
traffic policing for foreign camera troupes,
found “witches” among thinking women,
burned their brains with their bodies.

“Low Intensity Conflict”
one group of paymasters called it,
before even they saw through the lies
to the spleen of darkness, the compulsion
to dispense death, dispel all hope.

For a decade more, the string-cut puppet
ran amok, till blood diamonds and terror
protected him no longer. Savimbi is buried;
his stain festers on our re-written histories
of the world he poisoned.

The Cubans built flats by the 1^st May roundabout,
opposite the military hospital, Luanda’s finest.
Women waited outside it, for news of loved ones.

Too often that news sent them
into dances of grief, at death.
I saw how land mines tend
to devour not a whole leg,
nor just a foot, but to assuage
their greed at mid-calf.

There was another vista: an expanse of earth
between the blocks, trampled hard 24/7
by shifts of boys, an occasional girl,
single-minded soccer maestros in the making
before the army claimed their bodies.

Yet some survived the holocaust,
our proxy war, to make their country known
for music, sport, partying, as well as death.