Elegy On The Death Of A University Don (To The Revd. Dr. Leslie E. T. Shyllon) Poem by Moses Kainwo

You stars that sell the gloomy late evening news
Willing harbingers!
Have declared untold sleeplessness
On the eternal legal instance of nature and time fleeting time
To search into the night for truth in rumours
Did the summer leaves that took the Fall pass
Actually fall to the ground and turn into ash
This tale must not be sold in Freetown only
Where the Venetian palate is on top
And the tongue is non est in battle
This account is with the seller who died
Instantly after the big bang event
You who specialize in tall tales
That know of stars and their names and their age
When they are active or inanimate
When they are living or uninteresting
What is the sealing on your knowledge here
What would his wife of those many years say
Or his children who still go by his word
Or his friends who communed with him daily
Or the students who in search of knowledge
Searched him daily to drink from the water of Lees
Or congregations that grappled with the methods
Of salvation for mankind
In the name of acknowledged religion
What has become an avowed misnomer
With friends spitting brimstone at friends
And the man would interject et tu Brute
Then stood Caesar to throw the dart at Brutus
Then fell Brutus to mark the end of war
But was there a seminar for students
On truth in the Chapel or policlinic
Of how the hoi polloi are displaced
By the anointed intelligentsia
On the Altar of greed and sadism
No more than the Church historian can tell
And the itinerant, surreptitious
Vulture-like doves will come in their numbers
To flank the aisle with their gowns and skirts and rompers
In carefully graded sympathy
For me I am left to chew upon this truth
I have seen tears
But let compassion be showered from heaven
Yes passion in gentle drops on all heroes
For all are heroes in the arena
All are champions in the game of death
Who started dying the very day of birth
But did I clearly hear you say he died
How can they die who hoist the flag of truth
I mean truth in whatever shape or form
As long as other scholars feed on it
Kings, Noble Men, Entrepreneurs
And Seraphims All
As long as healers daydream by it
As long as shepherds find their sheep by it
Let that passion fall with speed on them all
…on them all
… on them all
… on them all
… on them all
… on them all
… on them all
… on them all