Poem: How They Designed their Misery
By: ’Deji W. Adesoye
That claim, they opportuned my lay
To the smart siege
By which the devil from Hades was slain
That walk like gold-merchant through
Arcades of gold-freaks decked at every point
Of waiting precious-ware-addicts
That Like the son of David
Rode through to Jerusalem
Through isle girded both ways
By shout of sorts and hail of kinds
The glory they may win of a feat
That’s none their contrivance
They loosed the bolt of blood-clot
Of the wounds of wars long-won
Against the hand by which the steel dissembled their feared foe
That Golgotha again might
Flow its red mischief.
Alas!
The cob under soil they cover in fair noon
But in pitch night dark it germinates
And like the travellers’ walking forest, moves
Eerily about them.
And the tree they felled in night covering
In broad-day, dusk and twilight
Grows and wither
Grows and wither
Grows and wither…
In their lone theatre of frantic fright
And now obscurity serene
They cherish vainly against the present maniacal plague.
*****
The author is pursuing his MA in Philosophy, University of Ibadan, Nigeria.