01/03/2023
Monody For Our Ailing Land
The fishes in our water no longer swim
The birds in our forests no longer chirp
The dogs in our homes no longer bark
Alas! cloud of silence hovers the sky.
The fruits in our garden are pluck'd unripe
The ladder to our future lying broken.
Daylight is stiffled by sudden nightfall
As our rivers flow in currents of monody.
My earth, your earth is quivering
The earth on which our feet stand.
Our sky is gathering fogs at sunrise
The sky on whose loins our heads lean.
In this land all eyes are weeping:
Men's and women's; young's and old's...
Now who'll cuddle the griefing birds
Amid our failing appetites?
We've come to count tomorrow's
losses with the hands of today;
Who'll look at us in the eyes and tell
us it shall be well again?
Father has sold his boys for a gift of cowry
Mother setting out on a tour to perdition,
Leaving home for lizards and geckos...
Our tears have made an ocean
Who'll drink from it and say it tastes cool?
We're sweating amid harmattan haze,
As the canticles of our woes are cheerful songs for they that pushed us this far.
▪︎NCN.
