Questions and Prayers Poem by Remi Raji

when the locusts come, will you greet them
with tears and blood, in the aftermath of fractured years?

when the termites come with fangs of iron
can you be the grit stubbornness of rocks?

when your throat is filled with fire
why do you watch in silence?

where will you give birth to the red hunger
of truth, who will welcome the sailing tongue?

where will you hide amid these impatient clouds
will you go where the smoke is perfumed light

when your throat is filled with fire?
will you bury the anger in the coffin of laughter?

you are a poet, the incurable child,
can you dream a song for tomorrow?

or are you cursed to cry without ceasing
about wilted seasons fattened in sorrow?

each time you leave you weep
as each time a lover leaves you on a rough road,

each time the wind brings the news of your own bleeding
they ask what will you do, why are you silent as the dead bee?

even if you spit poison as the saliva of oceans
what will happen, what will happen?

still do not sleep, dream but scream at slumber,
will you forget those forgotten in the teeth of dogs

those to whom agony is both foretaste and dessert
whose faces are painted in gloom, who bleed still and dance in hope?

Salute them all, who never said farewell to our tale.
Salute them, who always return, flowers in the diseased heart.

To all the seeds, all the fruits, and all the plants
and all the trees without names, offer a prayer of rains

To the locusts and termites, spoilers of rivers
and plunderers of farms, let the tongue become the fire,

let the fire borrow the shine of a thousand-edged sword,
let the sword burn and soothe the land.