African by birth, urbane, yet casual
Royalty by blood, literate, yet colloquial
One can attribute it to all sorts of things
A Scholar by avocation;
Yet believer in the tradition of the elders
An alien in a strange land
It never sounds glorious to me
Of diverse intellectual passion,
Each word becomes past
Such is the polluted air of life:
It surrounds and engulfs
Stumbling and incoherent even to myself
Two people encased in one soul
An alien; squeezing essential meaning
Each day into a divided life.
Sophisticated; yet nonchalant
From Moscow to London, and from Washington to Bonn
Now he is free, but is he really?
One half never equals the other
Forever an alien in a strange land.