I. Lessons Since Eternity
Did we not truly go to sleep? Take
Leave of absence from the world of rage?
Why then the lamentations? Chibok? Dapchi?
Neither was yesterday, nor yester year,
Nor decades, nor centuries suddenly absolved
Of guilt. A Forest called Sambisa spells
Millennial past and present open chutes
Dispensing lies. We shrink in fear, squeeze dry
The province of the mind. Each vacuum grants
Occupancy to the flatulence of deities.
Only the name of godhead differs, power
Is the name it veils, the sacramental end
Whose hallowed halter keeps humanity in check.
Clerics smirk at swelling herds of devotees
In rapt assemblage, ranked for fleecing.
Slaughter racks of centuries stand replaced
By mass disposal engines of modernity.
The hand that blesses also pulls the lever –
History mocks. History strikes again!
Our guilt is this – it lies, not in a spasm
Of neglect that gives sheep to wolves
For mating. The crime began aeons of time
Ago, distends into the unforeseeable.
It lies in this concurrent hour, a metronome
Ticking time away in antique mode.
Mesmeric, illusion reigns, and motion fakes
Progression. We sleep, we wake. Others did not.
The child in us dies in the child that died –
No one seems to mind. There are other children,
Captives to be bounced on trampolines
Of lies. One lie lies flattened, another
Rises in its place, sanctified, yet hawked –
In open stalls, writ: Revelation.
The lie resumes its march in lame pietisms
We gazed beyond the cancer, pricked the cyst.
Honour killings stay in vogue, child rape,
Draped in festive rites – uneven nuptials.
Serially. A child is soiled rags, manfully
Used, manfully discarded. Behold a nation’s
Cross-border paedophile earn a hero’s
Welcome in Abuja, crucible of laws
That claim to set the human sense of being
Apart from rutting beasts. Salute the martyred
Groom. Behold the wise, elected ones,
Bonded in lush renumerations, race
To enter laws that make woman of the child
Once the bans of marriage are pronounced!
The cleric’s unctuous voice ascends to bless
The impatient thrust of lust and – emulation!
Scripture-glib, pontificating groom,
Who seeks to drape the pervert streak in man
In gospel robes and texts inviolate. Is yours
A different faith from neighbouring Chad?
Are you informed? There, prison gates await
Your soul-mate, preening minister of state
Who thought to flout his nation’s sexual code
In deep hinterland, far from policing eyes!
Approach the Sufi seers of Senegal for verdict –
Those saints of self-denial and inner light.
Show me the creed that lowers motherhood
To eleven years, and I shall lead you
To that forest where Chibok bears,
At wedlock rape, stigmata of vaginal fistula.
Evasion is what nations manage best.
Bow to shrill doctrines, preach toleration even
Of the intolerant, rationalize
The irrational, embrace spiked breasts
In fearful deference to creed. We kiss
The bishop’s crozier regardless, even where
Its crook is manifestly crooked, turns
Bludgeon, advertises services for hire
To highest bidders. The cowering catamite
Awaits his turn behind the altar – Ask not
For whom the bell tolls, it tolls – Dies irae –
For thee. It is mortals – you and I –
Who grant sanctity to myths that crashed
In outer space, centuries before man
Took his tottering steps on lunar dust.
The adopted name of Piety is Ostentation,
Rivalry intense, who does it loudest, garishly
Obtrusive. Mere guidance texts from antiquity –
From alien worlds, schismatic tussles –
Turn compulsion to self-strangulate.
Walk the markets, explore the slums, peek
Through curtains of the affluent. The veil
Of attestation sinks ever lower, till infants
Yet unweaned now don the passport bib
And cowl that promise paradise. True piety?
Or adulthood speeded up, ripeness contrived
To meet demands of leering legislators?
We venerate hot gospelers. Their voices
Crack pulpits, shrines and minarets, unleash
Canticles of unctuous cant whose shards
Pierce wide open souls. T...