A boy, I dreamed of being a captain

in the ocean’s foreign policy, catching

the fast currency, binding my pirogue

with a rope to hold back the breakers. 
Listen, today a jazz singer drowned,

the infringing Atlantic shipped pirates

who winch poaching flags as Senegal’s

men scrape in the grimy sweatshop.
If only stories were like driftnets hurled

farther than Rosetta time, but comets too

are spun, desiccating colonies. And oceans

a chagrin, a tattered trellis of sardinia.
Our fish are émigrés, there’s no mercy for

the spawning flurry: our blood flows West

dragged in undertows from Saloum to Seine,

where Europe serves sovereign ministries.
Banks, NGO charities flog our sick children.

We’d starve if not for bushfood: tortoise or

dolphin meat, our villages flood, leave us

licking silt-stained boabs, rum-soaked palms.
But I am one of Senghor’s thin-legged,

migrant sons, too proud to beg for breadfruit;

hungry for Spain. Listen, today we threw

a decomposing body overboard ─ and prayed.