Ink Of Iron, Heart Of Stone - (A Lamentation For The Wounded Land) Poem by Akwu Sunday Victor

I saw him.
The one they said had changed.
He walked past my window yesterday,
carrying kola and bread for his mother,
smiling like a boy who had only just returned from farming
not from fire,
not from blood.

His turban now white,
but I remember the red that once soaked his sleeves.
I remember his boots on our holy mat,
his rifle resting beside the Qur'an.
He took Papa.
He took Amina.
He took peace from our throats
and now they say, 'Forgive. Forget. Reintegrate.'

But how do you welcome back a storm
and expect sunshine to bloom?
A goat that eats your yam twice
should not graze in your garden again.

Their doctrine
etched in their hearts with iron ink,
carved with the blade of hate,
was not erased by soft speeches in Abuja halls.
They knelt only to rise stronger.
They wept only for the camera.
The tree that bore bitter fruit
was not uprooted only repainted.

In our village,
Mama still rocks an empty wrapper,
singing lullabies to a child she buried
with nothing but a name.
Fatima, her eyes always lost in smoke,
cannot hold her husband's hand
not when she remembers what hands
dragged her sister into the bush.

Now the killers return.
Home.
To their own wives
while many wives sleep alone,
or not at all.
The wombs they once broke,
now carry secrets that cannot be born.

They say he is reformed.
But his shadow still flinches at the sound of a rooster,
trained to wake and kill before dawn.
They say he is healed
but the knife remembers its edge
even after being washed.

Forgiveness without truth
is like covering a snake with a wrapper,
hoping it will warm you.
We are not fools.
We have not forgotten.
The ashes on our roofs are still fresh.
The trees still hum with the songs of the kidnapped.
Their names echo like rain on zinc:
Zarah.
Yusuf.
Kemi.
Gone.
And their ghosts walk beside us
while the government shakes hands with their tormentors.

Tell me
If you grind pepper with rotten tomatoes,
will your soup not carry the stench?
If you pour water into oil,
can you make it wine by declaration?

Let the wind carry this truth across every hamlet:
Peace without justice is war in disguise.
A man cannot rebuild the same house he bombed
with the same hands not without first digging graves,
saying names,
confessing sins,
and weeping loud in the market square.

Until then,
we will watch
eyes wide, hearts burning,
our hands on our cutlasses,
because even if the masquerade removes his mask,
we know the dance.
And we remember the drumbeats
that sent us running into the bush.