The river no longer
Sleeps in its bed
Its pillow is now
A cradle of broken skulls
Legendary JP
Cannot count the casualties
In the frightened waters,
Though season after season
He has watched the moon toss and turn
Like the proverbial reed in the tide
The Nun, ravaged by ruthless rigs,
Now crawls tiredly towards the sea
Even as her remnant virtue
Lingers languidly in Okara’s majestic verse
When last did you hear the moans
Of Omoja whose beneficence nourished
Ojaide’s songs when his years were young
And the rains were rich and real?
Crying creeks, violated valleys
Toxic cocktail of cannibal cartels
Quenchless, like Ifowodo’s Oil Lamp
Blinding, like Ikiriko’s Oily Tears
We all thought it was oil
But Bassey saw the blood behind the boom . . . .
Dark days
Nights fraught with flares
Omens without Amens
Strange like a seven-headed plague
*From Green: Sighs of Our Ailing Planet, the author’s new book of poems.
Direct references to J.P. Clark’s A Reed in the Tide; Gabriel Okara’s ‘River Nun – III’; Tanure Ojaide’s ‘In the Omoja River’; Ogaga Ifowodo’s The Oil Lamp; Ibiwari Ikiriko’s Oily Tears; Nnimmo Bassey’s We Thought It Was Oil But It Was Blood.