Late Evening At A Junction Poem by Okoemu Okoemu Okoemu

It is always this time
At sunset, when the night
Shades are falling over
These teens start rounding off
They've walked all streets
They came from Uwa or Upper
Some came after school
Some didn't go at all
Because they had not the means
All of them are not children
of their mothers
They are just everything in that house
But children!
Neither the man to call a father
Nor the mother to call a mother
Just a maid.
Through Adesuwa,
Each finds way
Roaming through boundary road
And water resources
Taking to 1st and 2nd Ugbor
Going through Etete
Walking all of powerline,
All the streets of GRA
Hawking everything
Then, at sunset
They converged at etete junction
To feed their eyes and sell more.

Looking at moving cars
With grimace of pain
Sweat on their brow
Not the kind of your sweat
It's oily and always there
'cause they are born to die with it
The sweat is heavy, sluggish
It doesn't run, it just stand there
and gleams like a fine olive oil.
What must we do to their souls?
How different they must be
in their private concerns
and evaluations and wishes!

They carry tray on their heads
The hail the cars passing
They want to sell to them
They want to fee how the inside is
When they sell for them
Just for their hand to stretch in
That coolness, that scents
Enjoyment of the rich!

Their great black innocent eyes
look into ours with such soulful
intensity that not even
the worst randy in the cars
will have the slightest
sexual thought about them
They are very young
Some of them 11 and looking
Almost 30.

Look at those eyes!
Like the eyes of the Virgin Mother
When she was a child
We see in them, the tender
and forgiving gaze of Jesus
And they just stares unflinching.

Look again!
They penetrate with sorrowful
and hypnotic gleam
When they talk,
They suddenly become
frantic and almost silly
In their silence, they are themselves.

Any act of kindness
Any act of charity
Round their mouths
Like the mouths of chorister children.
They hate to see the evening go
The streets have more comfort
To homes.
As the cars fade off the streets
And etete junction is almost alone
They wave at each other
Hell of home was next
They wish they could make a turn
And never see that home again
Ahh! This is heart breaking.

- Okoemu Okoemu Okoemu