What I Owe My Hero (For Sardauna) Poem by Haruna Garba

No steam in it
It lacks substance
Each jab of these busy days

How they can't hinder me
From searching the engrams
Of carefree days
They refuse to fade away, those tunes
Mumbled by my tender tongue
Paeans, theme songs, nay
Slogans so nourishing
So enchanting
Memorized when I had scarcely found my tongue

It fails to fade away, his face
That had played me peck-a-boo
And now by the courtesy of printers
I see abundantly clear
In black and white, I see
The same giant in his cloak
Cloak, not so flamboyantly adorning
The plain inner robe
Immaculate ridge of whiskers
Running down his chin
Like river Benue and the Niger
On to the sea
A photographically preserved lawn
With a crescent-like hedge scythed low

A good photographic work
The giant still stands
Like a mammoth embroidered
With a lion's mane
Lamp stand compared to a stool's foot
Elephant among the buffalos
An oak to pine, indeed that's him
Nay, a geyser, a genius of breakthrough
A guinea pig

Towards the occident, soared he
White frail on ebon dress
So sang the maidens
At any wedding minstrel
And indeed, he's this hawk alright
Who knew he'd be hastened
But so he was in his mission Earth-skull
He had become a Ceasar
Our Ceasar, elephant-sized
Imposing hedge surrounding
The entire profile
Entire parameter of his face

He stands still, the goner stands still
Who took an heirloom rightly his
And built a villa ancestor-traced

When martyred our hero was
Dawn itself took a backward turn
God knows when it will dawn again

Magnificent, still stands he
By the Lioness who stood before the King
Earlieron that array prohibiting day
But it took him fast, that which swept the Lion
Just when my wisdom eye had scarcely seen
The sincere screen of his

Their satellites find orbits
Before they melt away, our heroes
Mammoth-like they will soon get quaint
This Ashraf-clan of the near east
Where I have trucked him down
Thus quaintly, quaintly paying him homage
With a minuet that relieves my tethered conscience