₦airaland Forum

NAIJA POETRY 18: When The Monuments ...

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.

AUTHOR: Funso Aiyejina; born in Ososo town, Akoko-Edo Local Government Area, northern Edo State, Nigeria, on Saturday 1st January 1949.


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