Dua Dua (The Mobile Tailor) Poem by Jerry Ukaigwe

It was Lolo that sang and dubbed him the sower
As he paddled his polio crookedly warped
Wiggly wobbly merrily rower
Their blouses he patched and their men he dwarfed

The village men envied and ready to poison
But their wives queued for words of mending
He sewed for a shilling even if they were in dozen
He harped, hopped and happily rendering


From him they borrowed in and out of season
The moonlight mused at the songs of his bravery
He was the dream of damsels of reason
And the hungry he fed without levy or slavery

But these he does not expecting praises
Nor to act and star in theatre of hubris
Merrily meekly joyfully graces
Yet the men mocked and took him for debris

That night snored and laid supine
With pride and pouted mouth they pounced his hut
Oh! Diogu and Eziogu the killers daggered his spine
And tethered for lions to tear him while hot

There were lions returning with itch
When they sniffed the killers smelling of blood
For tailor alive had been rolled to the ditch
The killers they tore and their carcasses on sod

Dew and the blood stench saluted the dawn
The women and their water pots wriggled in tears
For the intestines of the killers left none for fun
And the tailor they pulled with the strength of a bear

The sorrows of the killers' wives the tailor felt
As he was single and searching a bride
And widows were willing to move in with bent
So widows he took and made them his brides