The Gifted Poem by Haruna Garba

We were all babies
And all babies
Kick about
Their miniature feet

How come Pele's feet
Could kick so nicely, decisively?

That was when he got old enough
To fight his war
A war only to be tamed by guile

How else
But by drilling and drilling
If you would strike the oil
Providence might've buried in you

As a matter of legacy
Nobody just holds gun
And hits the bull eye
With a hand that
Knew no feel of it before
Who says we aren't all players?
No one would say
A tie is a stuff ever to be left intact
In all the matches of this world
Every event thereof being a game

Sometimes I begin to wonder
If this fluid which flows
In the veins is no crude oil
To be located, drilled and refined
With the blindfolded financier-me
Hitting dry well


Sometimes I begin to wonder
If these fibers below the skin
Would ever work like those strings
Made to be tunefully pulled
Let the puppets-we, dance to them
And which not all fingers can do

Sometimes I begin to wonder
If that projection throat-roomed
And made to stir the lung's wind
Could nicely do so in every throat

We are all players
With the vast majority
Unable to find the tunes
With which to nourish a human soul