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Refuted victories mimic life
Dangling in the reality of struggle;
Time…longer than rope…chokes hearts
Of children without mothers, as widows
Veil their grief—wailing in excruciating silence.
All, if the Grim Reaper misses them at night,
Awake to the gaseous rumblings of balloon bellies
Infused with the hollowing winds hunger generates.
Fragments of men, void of hope
Count the mounting dead of families;
Communal graves swelling with daily souls.
In the neap tides of sorrow, mourners
Wade in the blood left by the heirs of Pilate;
Whose hands are bleached white of wretchedness.
In the stale winds of time, “woe is me…”
Cries the forsaken ones—lamenting scripture,
Aping Freneau: “…we are our land’s woe…”
Another scene of misery reflect decaying bodies
Stacked like slices of moldy bread—releasing spores
Of death—clogging the nostrils of praying mourners:
“Leave us not without the manna crumbs of life…”
Like a sobbing bosom void of tears, life sags on;
The forgotten Sisyphus-like children continue to struggle—
In their ears, the warrior ghost of hope whispering.
Meanwhile, the onlooking world veils its self
With the sealed secret silence Soyinka spoke of:
“At this wake, none keeps vigil…None…”
(*A line from the poem, “Recession”, by Wole Soyinka.)
