A Child Is Born Poem by Tony Adah

Imagine the burden
Of cuddling a foetus in the womb
For nine full months or so
Never knowing if it's human, a toad or a goat
Imagine the birth travails, the spasms
The blood and the wailing baby
Having the taste of the worldly air.

It is a wakeful cheerful baby
Tasting the air,
Tasting alligator pepper
And tasting water and his manhood
Is shaped by the knife.

A four kilogram weight of mischief
He is nurtured and weaned
A cheer baby turned
Into a fretting young robber
Nine months load of vain nurturing
Reaping from what he met on ground
The pen and the paper, the hoe and the knife
That society offered him.