When The Monument... by Funso Aiyejina

For Walter Rodney and Ngugi wa Thiong’o

When the monuments to our past

are whittled down by new facts

and our dew drops of change

are sacrificed on the altar of state security,

we awake to the knowledge that

pebbles lodged in muddy ponds

must grow muddy with time…

Now that our messiahs have chased our dreams

from the sacred corners of our hearts

into the blind alleys of our ghettoes

where they proceed to slaughter them

before our astonished imagination

summoning history to witness their feast,

it is time we rejected those who

have severed the link between prayer and miracles,

those who mock our voices with great signboards

which proclaim only fairy-tale projects

and those who make us build the podia

on which they stand to salute our misery

on every anniversary of the revolution.

Funso Aiyejina

Funso Aiyejina (born in 1949 in Ososo, Edo State) is a Nigerian academic, poet and playwright. He graduated from the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife where he lectured. He also lectured at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago and at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri.