Buffalo Soldier Poem by Martins Akhoeneto

He came where red earth
remembered every wound,
where hunger spoke
one language.

Kokori lay rich beneath its feet,
yet children counted meals
by handfuls,
while men in polished shoes
auctioned tribe to the hungry.

Then fire entered the market.

Rumour struck the match.
Neighbour turned on neighbour.
Those who fed the flame
counted the harvest.

Adamu was ordered to withdraw.

But children cried
beyond the smoke.

So he stayed.

He entered the burning streets
without asking tribe
Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Ijaw.
He carried the wounded
as though every life
were his own.

When bullets came,
he became the threshold
between death and dawn.

He fell
where strangers were dying,
and rose carrying
more than his rifle.

Then truth surfaced:

while the poor were taught
to hate across the river,
the powerful crossed every border
to divide the spoils.

The market breathed again.

Hands that once held stones
returned to scales and baskets.
Children of different tongues
played beneath one sky.

"Why did you stay? "

He watched the children.

"Before we inherit a tribe,
we inherit one another."

They called him Buffalo Soldier

not because he could not break,
but because he bore
a wounded country
without becoming its wound,

and walked on
until even the road
remembered home.