-By Azua Alonu

Inside the labyrinth of time

The time when our nation convulse

When a wayward war took the life of

Our country, your bile rose in breary bite

You ran towards temper’s temerity

Inside the labyrinth of time, you seek

To separate a fight,

In that fervent fitful fracas, fainting

Alongside victims and victors.

But three hand cuffs in your hands

Prison becomes your refuge

The man died, the silent one

Who betrayed in the face of tyranny

Became the hero

And you boomed with you hynas laughter

Thunder in your stomach

You greeted dawns awakening

With vocifarous voice of desent

Now, you have 90 cowries in your calabash

They who hide beyond lousy fig leaf

Peep to see whether your slender face

Has been suffocated by acrimony

Even when you age in rest

They put the nation’s burden on you

To speak yet again to power

They do not need new voices

It is your voice they need.

Why?

They want to ride an old horse to death

The ducks want you ferry them.

With the duckling across temptous river

In that new day and new night

Where are the whales and lguanas

Two nights cannot be the same

The songs of dawn cant be the same.

Till night falls

The fight is still in the jungle

The demons are raising triumphant fingers

They do that in the night because

The necklace on your neck dangles

With light

The 90 coweries in your calabash

That Ogun gave you

In the groves of pantheon pit

Are the compass that lead you?

History salutes your guts

You who dances in the inferno fire

When many recoil in fear

Now the rain is here

With bulging cloud

Periwinkles and frogs have taken over

The dance

The tide treats them tenderly

Till they grow.

Now I hear 90 thunder clap of victory

The coweries in your calabash

Chanting words that the priests do not

Understand in this season of anomie

Now we need interpreters

Deities have come to witness the monotonous movement

They heard your incantations

The catechism of a lion – deity

They are here

Walking through the sum bathed corridors

Of ignonous route

Libation is poured with stale palmwine

Repentant worshippers stood naked

Pleading for restoration

You join the deilies, your 90 cowries

Have turned into a diviners’ chain

Ready to be given to a holy son

Whom the goddesses spoke to this early dawn

We await

The uncomposed cacophony of melodies

We await

The masked morning waiting for sunrays

The solitary sun

Comes in ninety strides of the gods

Looking around in search of

The missing mission of our country’s monasteries

We await.

We await

The mountain of memory

The hissing of history

The resurrection of truth

That day of songs

Songs of victory

In the market place of triumph

The 90 cowries in your calabash

Will speak all that they know.

Azua Alonu,

Poet and Chairman,

Delta Literary Forum,

Asaba.