By Jumoke Verissimo
They who force a man to slumber to
befriend his herders and win his cattle
should keep awake so he would not stir.
For in his wake he'll fight that his
Forest of Flowers should not like the
Quagga become some fabled beauty.
With flowing nibs and lips Ken,
you fought men's barrels into emptiness.
You warred against men of wilting
senses, the shellers of dreams
with faculties on break.
We understood Ken,
we knew your yearn,
and we saw it Penned...
We muttered prayers that claimed death for the torturer
we appealed that the wicked be pummelled to grave silence.
And as the sickness of their heads bullied our thoughts
into quiet; we auctioned our heads and broke reason,
so that even understanding lost its understanding.
If we had struck a deal with God...
If we could strike a deal with God
we would avoid the crucifixion of that November
we would call father, father have you forsaken us...
We would murder the goat who abashed conscience
we would batter the existence of his descent.
But we have not struck a deal with God
and if we goad our imagination
into believing that the end was the beginning
the many endings tells us nothing has change.
Ken,
our dreams are treading On a Darkling Plain
see where alien greed has landed us,
into tanks of brains burning in the content of discontent
toddlers abducting seas of foreigners into our mangrove
meals of death served in kerosene stoves...
we know
black market — stark dearth — charred deaths,
we know
cooked flesh — booked fates — timed lives
we know
these many endings tells us nothing has change.
The woodcock for its children's sake
cast its feathers in a flood of dye
The woodcock for its children's sake
cast its wings in the blood of camwood
Ken for the sake of Ogoni birthed
dreams in the ashes of defilers:
I may be dead but my ideas will not die (Ken Saro Wiwa 1995)
You fought Ken,
against the straying greed of strangers' zeal
they still let out our own as hounds
but we clutch your words as guard:
They are not going to arrest us all. All for shell.
we have risen in battle...
They haven't arrest us all.
They can't arrest us all...
they will arrest alone their conscience
for the fruit of convalescence lives in our tree.
We are a mind
We cannot be arrested by threats of death.
Your war, our war, the war
was beyond the Ogoni clan
it is of a mother pricking its baby's eyes with thorns.
