From Book-banners to Book- burners)
for Jack Mapanje
… a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm’d and treasur’d up on purpose to a life beyond life
John Milton: Areopagitica, 1644
These, still, are seasons of rapid edicts
Let running tongues mind the bend
On Memory’s road
The censor’s voice drops,
oath-laden,
like a wrathful axe:
silence rules the twilight
of bleeding words;
an orphaned lyric limps along,
curse-coated,
larynxed by muted whispers
The glossy glide of new books,
future-bound
with orchards of vigilant leaves
polyglot bridge of severed musings
oracle of a million fables
counting Wisdom’s kernels in
white and luminous black**
The despot’s scourge,
magic scrawls on his iron wall,
the bearded prophet of every vowel
ringing bells which claim the calm
of stolen dawns
Read Also: Let your voices be heard, Makinde charges Nigerians to rise for true federalism
The Queen’s goiter
the Emperor’s swagger,
alphabets which reek, every letter,
with the stench of gilded chambers,
the wind which bares the rumps
of hen-pecked braggarts …..
It hides what they seek
it seeks what they hide;
they who cover raging smokes
with the basket of murderous lies
The moon laughs in its sky
knowing so well the journal
of passing frenzies
These, still, are seasons of rapid edicts
Let running tongues mind the bend
On Memory’s road
To Continue next week