Travellers Tale Poem by Emmanuel Joseph Olumakiss

The land i've known ghost
Among them the chieftains;
Ezemmuo, Ezimadu and Ndimaa
No rich and poor play
All work with the same faith
No shout giving deceased ones
Reason human die and refuse wake
Much noise and healthy tears

Head to head we walk
When welcome our guest
Strange sound our band
Our exchange; A front for all back
Hands form leg
Who can differentiate human among dead?

I, in charge of mortal case
We forbid been buried our outskirt
It is a caricature of dead ones
Mimicking the dead we don't like

There's an increase in dead rate
Living a human world we regret
It is we the dead that worry most

Aaa! a certain man has no roof to dwell
He has no vineyard of his own
He only lives on borrowed foods
He even borrows the clothes he wear
And the ideas in his own head
His actions and behavior are just
to please somebody else
Like my grandmother Urudinya
trying to please her husband
Now his life is no more
He died wretchedly with nothing
Since the days of my human life
And there he is like a fugitive
Drenched by the rigid rain


My brother case could it make a difference
He courageously burnt the shrine of our late
Fathers after his trip to the white house
And chased our gods to nearby evil forest
He likely said; tradition is evil
Its against his new found faith
But has forgotten thus;
This the same place he was born and brought up
He feeds on our millets
And also drank the same water from our running stream
Even used our father's herbs
Yet it neither smite nor betrays him
Is there any thing wrong with our tradition?
His little trip to the white world has brought evil
upon our household
Here he disowned his natives
Alas! See the trouble he brought to his lineage
He died so cheap like a guinea fowl
Look at him there standing isolated in the mids
of the dead ones.

Oh! Ignorance have ruin the world
Could it be as a result of western education?
Another friend of mine has refused to honour
the late father's dead
Sound of drum and gun shot
He refused to be heard
All because he was too religious
Or may be his Christian faith
Any way who knows!
Here he comes in his father in-law burial to
prove his power and greatness
But forgotten the tradition
See the death penalty he face
Clearing our farm land in the dead world

M-mh staying with the dead could be great!
Few are nice lest I forget
Though too worried in grave
If you see my healthy fathers
They now emaciate
I pity and pity
But change not their fate
They complain of coming home again
I refused instead better stay unawake
Becos they hardly bear part of our pain

Why haven't the gods do that they should?
Instead put human under foot
They tell us what to do
But deny us that which is good
Could it be the soothsayers are dupe?
We carry every of their problems like fire wood.