Loaded with intense and brief lilies in fill bloom
The fragile glow of the cassia tree lining the roads
To proclaim the beauty and brevity of human life,
I recall the nightmare of my brother’s death in his youth
On the last day of the month labeled cruel by the poet …
When April ends, armed with its seasonal overnight kit
I seek solace in the already evident month of May:
The birth month of our hopeful future continuous
When the flamboyant tree rooted in one of our pasts –
Constantly a target of elemental and human decrees –
Blooms forth in all its glory, paying no heed
To the presiding clusters of campus intellectuals
Who, borrowing a leaf from the resident colonies of bats
Ravage our green fruits long before the harvest season,
Blindly out-doing each other like crabs in barrels
Struggling for vantage rungs on the ladder of escape …
After the brief lilies and the fragile cassias of April
I seek solace in May with its flames of the forest
Which tower defiantly above cretins who have adopted
The belly-to-earth pose of the Ile-Ife campus lizards
Permanently glued to ground dirt in hopeful obeisance
When they should stand up, bloom and be counted as
Contestants for the flaming crown of struggle, as
Members in a procession of satiated priests in worship
As followers of Ogun returning triumphant from battle
With the palm fronds of peace in his left hand
And in his right the steaming sword of conquest
His carpet of glory leading into fields of hope
As a guaranteed link with the month of September:
The month of sunshine: the sunshine of harvest time
When the miracle of May is doubled and re-confirmed.
Funso Aiyejina
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