The Song Of The Women Of My Land by Oumar Farouk

Like a sculptor chipping away at bits of wood, 

Time chisels away bits of their memory 

It strips away lyrics of the song of the women of my land

Leaving only a fading tune echoing the song, 

they sang in the forlorn fields 

about their lives; songs 

of how they ploughed the terrain of their mindscape; 

for memories of lyrics lost in the vast void of time 

in those days when a song beheld their lives; 

when servitude cuffed the ankles of their soul, 

and dereliction decapitated the epic of their lives. 

With a song, they sponged off their anguish, 

to behold their collective pain, 

to celebrate their gains, 

give lyrics to the tune of their lives, 

cheat the tyranny of time, 

and commune with the yet unborn 

to give meaning to an epoch lost in antiquity, 

Yet time strips the lyrics and scars the tune, 

leaving a dying song 

Dead!

Like the women who died long ago, 

Leaving the song to tell the story of their lives 

Today the tune roams the forlorn fields

Like their souls looking for lyrics

To tell the tale of the servitude 

Of the women my land 

Who ploughed their soil and soul 

For a song to sing the story of their lives 

The song of the women of my land 

left in the memory of the wind. 

Now feeding the verses of poets, it echoes in fields 

Wriggling in rhythms and melodies, 

Hollering in distant tunes 

In places Far aField From the Forlorn Fields, 

where the song of their lives died. 

The stuttering lips of my pen 

And the screeching voice of my nib 

try to sing the song of the women of my land 

In verses Far From the theatre of toil 

where they left a Song that now roams the land 

stripped of lyrics like a scorned ghost. 

The tune tuning the tenor of my verse, 

is all that remains of the song of the women of my land

Who labored and died leaving a dying song: 

The dirge of their lives! 

Oumar Farouk Sesay was resident playwright of Bai Bureh Theatre in the ’80s.  Several of his plays were performed in the then City hall and he won accolades among his peers. He veered into journalism and wrote for several local and international newspapers. He has been published in many anthologies of Sierra Leonean poets; Lice in the Lion’s Mane, Songs That Pour the Heart, Kalashnikov in the Sun and AFRIKA IM GEDICHT.