Voices Without Faces Poem by Babatunde Idowu Ebenezer

I hear them clearer still with each dreamless night,
Mumbling, whimpering, singing, whispering and shouting,
Floating across to me from the seven seas and nine oceans,
Their unitary message a cacophony of ringing sepulchre bells,
Clear, sober, sad, hopeful, thin, gay, quiet and booming
Like an exploded grenade in the graveyard of my sleeping head.

Each night they remind me I have yet a day and a night less,
To pluck the chrysanthemum and burn the weeds,
To mow the lanes until they are immaculate and passable,
To clear the outgrowing branches and clear the cobwebs between them,
So I could glide gracefully to the zenith where I could change the scenery with imaginations.

Death would come to some as a dreadful monster,
Wearing the scary cape and brandishing the frightening axe,
But to me he would come when he would come to me,
Clad in a royal apparel of scarlet and wielding his golden staff of office.

And then I would happily die in my sleep still smiling in death,
Knowing I had crossed all the t's and dotted all the i's,
And left the world a better and more peaceful planet than I found it when I came.

I could hear them even now: the voices without faces,
Telling me I have a day and a night less to get ready for my journey of no return.