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It pricks my soul
to squat by you
while tyrant time scrapes scars
on your polished ebony cheeks
life’s drought drains your sap
and merciless harmattans
ravage your robust frame
to a withering okro stick.
Life was our kin
and time our kith
they sent us butter and bread
until these corrupt days
showed them the traitor’s lane
and now we pine away
I groan as powers make you bow
While I only gaze.
I know you will go like him
from this home of men
tired of this filthy air
to live in a happier sphere.
Your pollens are long extinct
and your courting bee, dead
yet why not stay with wings
to cloud your cheeks all night long?
When strife and want blow you hard
your sagged head finds comfort
in your thin palms
when this furnished world shows its back
and frowning gluttons
than stretch a drop
feed hundred weevils in their barns
you cheer with smiles and tears
the miserable wretch you call yourself.
I brew bitter verse for you
which you gladly seep in blue nights
and think that life’s a drama
with you as its tragic heroine
and truly you are:
matching crises with chants
and walking straight with clean palms
even though the world sits hard on you.
You’ll be shown to Paradise by nightfall
where godly pages hang about
eager to pay you their golden bows
where chunks of crystallised honey
drip down the apple tree of wonders
into the glistening brook of immortality.
Uchenna Franklin
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