Biafran Genocide - A Carnival Of Carnage Poem by Chinedu Dike

A reign of impunity, by northern hands decreed,
Met the wild, wild west, where lawless unrests bleed.
The mid-1960s fractured; the home-front gave way,
As a bloody coup ushered the soldiers to sway,
Etching deep ethnic borders in crimson array.

Then rushed the reprisal, a fierce counter-stroke,
And a wave of grim pogroms in fury awoke.
A chaos of doomsday, a merciless flood,
That littered the North with debris and with blood.
To the East fled survivors, with death on their heels,
Bearing the trauma that history conceals.

Trapped in a vast abyss where vendettas collide,
A fragile truce faltered to hegemonic pride.
With survival at stake and their prospects denied,
The Republic of Biafra was born of that tide.

Yet isolated it stood in its desperate quest,
By famine besieged and by terror oppressed.
A carnival of carnage, where weeping grew loud,
Set the bright rising sun in a funeral shroud.

'No Victor, No Vanquished, ' the peace pact would simulate,
Though torrents of blood redrafted the nation's fate.
Through shadows of coercion, the fragments remain,
An uneasy amalgam, held tightly by pain.