1
Like in the butchers’ parlor
In the abattoirs’ keep
On their walls hanged
Carcasses from carnage, drooping.
On their walls of gallant embroidery
Are chalk outline of ghost faces peeled and
Hewn,
With a greet of devotion in THEIR
Extremity
2
Raids like detestable lightening through
The city
With all the houses of brick edifice cast aloof?
Not to Heavenly God is such desecration
Whose lone hecatomb at Golgotha***
No!
They be the flame
Fuelled by logs of social decadence
The night ravages what the day spares-
Pallid children draped from head
Black garb sheltering their naked
Feet
On my telescreen seated unwept
In the sandy ways
Guarded by Faceless frame darker than ogiri oko**
There to strike their bosom and breast
And cry and lamentation.
Adulation of transgression in wailing prayers
Not to Aphrodite*
{The flinty singer and HER tribute}
Be kind, heavenly golden child!
No institution responsive
No opulent brings bread
Their fruit sets teeth on edge
They taste sour and burst throat into
Unquenchable thirsting
A hundred moons have passed
And groaning mothers adorn in sackcloth;
Bathed in Ashes cannot bear-
Stricken by melancholic grief
Their mother, their nation
3
Like a wild fire the scourge through the
Nation crossroad or the confluence
will sweep past
Your wooden barricade of hypocrisy
Through your unguarded treachery the
Blistering flame of your device
There will be no dawn for the burning night
No sea will appease this bowbellied
No shield for this two edged sword
(….again, the flinty minstrel)
Be kind, God’s Heavenly child!
Till we send the vulture plummeting
Into the vast sea-room of the Niger
Or into the waves that coast westward
Of Benue-
*** a place of burial (of Christ)
** extended title of a yoruba Deity called Esu
* the goddess of love and beauty (Greek myth)
