Way back when, before chickens became toothless
And turned champion devourers of back-up grains …
Before drunk agents came crashing into our dreams
Armed and ready to arrest metaphors in our streams
On the orders of a General high on syndicated acclaims
Galloping full-speed ahead of our children’s fervent pleas,
I believed with the innocent citizens of our nation
In the open-arm one-on-one embrace of salutation.
But after seeing wily foxes at work in our forests
Spiders spinning deadly webs in and out of contexts,
I now know why, even as they bury comrades freshly killed
Fists of the children of Soweto remain forever clenched.
We have always had their likes: inheritors and usurpers
Who, too cowardly to confront the truths in our songs
Would don the dirty garb of aberrant masquerades
Determined to waylay and strangle singers of tales
Long before the ascension of this General Tortoise.
Today, descendants of those same insolent renegades,
Protected by the anonymity of their choice profession,
Courageously finger the homes of witnesses of truth
Forgetting like their ancestors now condemned to oblivion
That the outstanding relatives of a condemning finger
Are inevitably aimed back at the heart of the pointer.
Whatever darkness conceals, dawn is bound to reveal.
Why argue with men who insist they are really clad
In exotic robes when it is too dark to investigate?
Let them dance. Let them prance. Like the intoxicated.
Daylight, when it arrives on the silent wings of dawn
Will reveal them as wearers of rags before the town.
Men like them are not new; we always had their kind:
Men who conveniently forget that when an order
Fit only for slaves is forced on us we must deliver
Such with the wisdom and courage of the free
Instead of kicking in wide open doors with glee.
To such men our ancestors sent collective ritual curses
Causing them to die abominable deaths, swollen with greed.
Funso Aiyejina
No comments:
Post a Comment