(after a painting with the same title by Obiora Udechukwu)
The road was a pot of holes
Sizzling under the harmattan’s relentless haze
The roadside grass wore the dust like a brave mantle
Its roots shoed helplessly in the caked camwood mud
Of long-forgotten rains
Through gullies, through valleys
Through peevish pebbles portered in
To grace the greed of yawning craters
Across trenches drilled deep by
The liquid fingers of yester torrents
We galloped on, our patient Peugeot
Insufferably faithful, our wake
One red army of dreadful dust
Houses flitted by
Like ragged masquerades on reluctant feet
Termite-tortured, windowless in critical places
Their faithful dwellers waving skeletal hands
At the cozy convoy of passing chieftains
So used to harvesting their smiles
And dredging their doldrum of tears
Villages limped past
Their corrugated brows dripping sweat and salt
Read Also: Natasha pays condolence visit to family of late Ohinoyi in Kogi
In the scorching sun, their schooless children
Staring vacantly into a future mortgaged
By Eating Chiefs, Bankruptcy Bankers
And other Vultures of the Vault
Whose patriotic perfidies have carrioned
A stricken nation. Dead hospitals,
Death-trap roads, powerless days, dark, dark nights
Perennial hunger in a land whose womb
Is round with unborn harvests
Broken bridges in a land of broken pledges
The towns limped past
Ikole, Ilogbo, Ayegunle, Aaye….
Whose roads know the tyres of tycoons
On their heedless pilgrimage
To the City of Gold
* Originally written in December 1985 upon my return from Abuja, venue of the annual ANA convention for that year.
(To be continued)