The Ceremony Of Ashes Poem by Emmanuel Ayeni

Our Harmattan came early to the field of knowing,
We seasoned earth and echo Arise, the ritual.
The scarecrow at the gate, wore lace, smiled slightly and let us enter,
Her children came in floods, their forehead glowing,
Eight, Ten or Twelve seasons all rough, still chasing another man's skies,
And graduated into cold, a nation with no centre.

The full moon climbed, Unseen, above the rocking floors,
Our elders in gowns measured the harvest and called it gold,
Then emptied out the gowned men, beyond the waiting gate,
We ride and hawk now, helmeted where mortarboards were once sworn,
Each newspaper and men were scholars in the cold.
The future was a door already locked by fate.

The nation smiled wild, stamped and gave them to the sky,
A sky without its birds, a sun that bore zero heat.
What they hawk to eat, a question to ask any man with honours.