Matyr Of Tenth November (For Kenule Saro Wiwa) Poem by Victor Okechukwu Anyaegbuna

Glue thy kiss to mother earth
That thy whole being may bow fully
To the noose of violence;
That hungry state maggots
May quench their long drawn hunger
On the sweet elements
Of your spunky carrion.

I died my soul to starvation
And lost my memory to your fate
On Eko bridge on my marred natal anniversary
Least presumptuous and day-dreaming
In the noon traffic
Of the anarchy that is called power
Flowing from empty tunnels
Of cadavers in vicious motion.

Let thy tears, if any, nourish
The roasted earth to give fresh life
On your most glorious exit:
In this cruel abruption
When skies turned grey and gloom
Threatening to rain blood on rainbows
And archaic birds howled ominously
Protesting disturbance
Upon our undignified return to their stone age.

Your knightly machismo defied shame
When the Creator’s years
Were suddenly turned to seconds
And succumbed in probity to mortality
Least expected, unsuspected; craven offensive
In a civil war front hijacked
By evil might in khaki funk oppression.

The misteaching of vulgar
False leaders styled politicians
Floating purchased minds,
Themselves in bondage,
For gluttony and lack of integrity
Has interred their wit.

Ken, you inclined prey to gallows
On conspiracy of felons
Betraying the zest of usurped state power.
You tumbled to judicial murder
At the behest of khaki adorned jackboots
And a starved, ravaging man-like beast
That strayed into sententious retreat
And hawked the ghost of his conscience to numisma.

You regressed in martial mortality
And rose elevated in matyrdom
Heroed in a trampled citizenry
And famed in the global village.

I do not question your fate
In measure for callous braveries
Of yesterdays, neither injustices
Humanly considered and constructed
That enslaved; nor the suicides
Therefrom of compatriots known and unknown.

I decline to effect or pamper sanctified humour,
If it be so,
For even kangaroo heads and their habiters
Still must face this endless compensation
In equivalence for their testimony.

I only humanly weep in my ignorance
And confine myself to this ring
Of intellectual misunderstanding
For vanity reigns in higher degrees
Beyond mere perception;
And the destiny of a people
Hangs on the cowardice of the downtrodden
Whose sole accomplishment is self-sustained poverty
In the midst of plenty;
With sheer greed and aversion
To sacrifice, and staple valour:
All to enrich hell and fuel her fires of doom
And there from the beneficiary oppressors
Acknowledged in stolen affluence
Who sail aloft on the shoulders of the oppressed.

If you, Ken, journeyed so far
Your transience writes infinite poems
In lost identity.
Your ghost in vibrant true power
Rattles the globe angrily
And all is your humorous theatre
On the world stage, sympathetic and entertaining,
Prosy and full of tragedies and comedies
Uncontrollable charisma and euphoria,
Deceit and half truths,
Signaling the dearth of perpetuity
Of contradictions and mockery
Like the irrepressible ghost of Banquo.
The rock of evil trembles
Irreversible vanity on trail
Threatening to disintegrate
Yet unable to harm your pneuma.
You are now above human destruction
Yet cannot be appeased, or suppressed.
Your absorbed soul in all splendour
Your decomposed body in all memory,
After all,
Serve a mission accomplished.

(December 21,1995.
Olodi-Apapa, Lagos.)