The Testimony of Tajikistani

Askar, Oh Askar!
Did you read my memo to Qutbi Kirom on the whited sepulchres of Perestroĭka?

I have shed a million and one teardrops
For a million and one families in Dhaka in Bangladesh.
And for the countless unknown ones in unknown places
My teardrops have diluted the vinegar in my golden calabash.

My brother is struggling to catch up with the Joneses across the River Niger in Aba.
Ahaah! He is even better than the husband of Shuli in Dhaka.
Who is pushing rickshaw for bed and breakfast in a crime-ridden nation?
The poverty-stricken hordes are more than the rest in population.
They live from hand to mouth cursing the wrath of the earth in angst.

Millions of still-born dreams have been buried with the dead
Still-born dreams buried in their shallow graves
Like the shallow graves of hopeless slaves
Hopeless slaves who will never return to their far away homeland.
Their gluttonous masters toast to their own dreams over roast beef, caviar and champagne.
Ahaah! Ernest is sitting pretty sipping his $1, 000 a bottle Romanee Conti red wine.
While his kinsman Edwin is still suffering and dying of hunger in the village.
Sipping sour palm wine and chewing his sun baked green cabbage.

I see the endless rows of the downtrodden with their thin hands
Thin hands pointing at the vultures flying over their heads
Then falling on their knees with tear soaked eyes gazing at the clouds
Praying before the Throne of Grace of the only One who can save their forsaken souls.


By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima
~ I started this poem in the last quarter of 2009 and left it until I completed it on Wednesday March 17, 2010. I have included it in the third collection of my poems to be released soon. The first one Children of Heaven was published in 1987 and released in 1988 and the second one Scarlet tears of London was published and released in 2006.