Posted by Erhiawarien Justice Akpesiri on
Once atop the pyramid, I
I could breathe over the land at large,
Now I must dig a mine to find a pea
It was then,
When he who taps the latex finds a smile,
When palms and cocoa make the trade
And all the lands were ever green.
It was in 1956
When death began to fall and spread
Upon the land and all we had,
It was so bad but none was sad,
It hurt so bad that all were blind,
The bliss it brought was not for joy,
That brought the rich oppressive wealth
And all the poor were lowlier still
And now the young man leaves his hut
He’s left the frail and wrinkled ones;
How sad, alas, how bad it got
That this becomes our twilight tale.
And so would this be told
In turns of successive badness
To a generation of the unprepared
This the autopsy of a crouching land,
Dead, yet she die still
But who's there to say it so
When all the land strays unclothed
In this one illusion of a careless hope,
This hope found upon the foot of a sinking sand.
Tell to me what could be worse
Than this a life-long whirling curse
When pressed to take its fullest course;
What then will save this ailing child,
When cancerous things them run within
Some would say let’s extirpate,
And some prefer to desolate,
Some though would say annihilate,
All these bespeak of just a thing,
Let’s let the land become a waste,
Like what is left of Babylon;
But Babylon I would proscribe,
If there was hope that I could sniff
Yet what is there to quell my fears
This ship on sail I fear shall fail
When kirks and mores are laced in one.