This Earth Has Gone Mad Poem by Francis Kokutse

This Earth, My Brother has gone mad
Because the world we live in now
Has been turned upside down
Like a respected Henor singing
In the centre of Anloga market
In the nude at noon.

This is not the world we used to know.
This Earth, my brother, has changed
Because the times we live in are not good ones.

And l have sought to know why from the diviners;
But, Bokorga Amuzu does not have the answers.
Isn’t it strange, Nyidevu, that the diviner’s cowries
Do not tell us words from ancestors any more?

If Bokorga Amuzu had been able to
Divine, you would not have embarked
On this journey that took you out alive
And brought you back in a wooden box.
You said it in a coded form that,
This Earth, my brother…
But you did not end it.

I read your mind many years ago;
But could not question you because
It was not for the young to ask the older
Ones things they should not know.

This earth, Fo Kofi,
Has not treated you well;
I saw Daavi shedding tears
Because she wants answers;
Why did they take you away without
Any warning?
She would have sent you something to tell Brigas.

This earth, Fo Kofi
Has not been kind to you
And those of the people you left.
Now that you have gone to join
The world of our ancestors,
Where no one can see you even
When you come visiting as a ghost,
What happens to Daavi?

I saw Koku weeping,
Abla says your voice is talking to her
And Akpene has refused to eat;
They say, Brigas’ house has broken
And who is left to mend the broken fence?

It is not Dzogbese that has done this to you;
It is wicked men who have lost every desire to live’
They sang Allah when they released their bullets
On you, a man, who has no fight with them.

This earth, my brother has been blackened
By men whose desire is to fight without cause,
If l may ask, what has Fo Kofi got to do with a belief
That is happy to ‘kill them wherever you find them,
And turn them out from where they have turned you out.’
They sing from their Koran that Al-Fitnah [disbelief] is worse than killing...
And yet they all agree in chorus that,
Allah, their God is forgiving and merciful.

Fo Kofi,
You do not believe in their faith
And have not shown any likeness to any
Of the imported ones, so why should
They attack you for rejecting their faith?
Why should they punish you with
Terrible agony with the way they killed you?

I can only sing this earth my brother,
This earth, my brother
And this earth, my brother
Hoping that you would hear and
Respond that it was Dzogbese Lisa
That treated you the way you left.