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NEHRU ODEH
REALITIES:
Fragment of a Minstrel
Where oil overflow our lands
Plants produce fruits in scores
In a land peopled by paper notes
Ah! Beggars, crippled things, blind fingers
Luzuriate in the sun of our land.
In the morning
Leaves open their arms to the sun's embrace
And blue collar workers, skeletal souls
Trial steps of big wigs of flashy cars
That snail-drive on our jammed pot-holes
And have you seen
The sweaty truck pusher
Gulping a cup of scarce water after a hard day's toil
And the fettered prisoners plodding
Scurrying from a crime-boosting society
Remember
I am only a story teller
Let us go then you and I to the money market
Bargain with aso-oke traders
I know they will ruffle my tattered clothes with insults
Say that they are just
And the economy battered cheated the worse
But we shall carry on
This is a time for carrying and non-stopping
The smell of decay shall buffet our nostrils
Vultures rivet their long looks at us:
Meaning we are veritable food for thought.
(Though we shall still go to the market)
I can see kids coming from school
Faces squeezed like crumpled clothes
Weary of an Herculean learning
That is useless in a retiring world
A world retiring
Like the bubbling night bats
From the young budding day
And we are in a young world
Yet have outlived our fragile gums
Changed our leaders like own clothes
In our hungry world
Ah Akowe! Do not say I digress
For there is still time
Time to carouse and to work
Ah work? Not work but beg
For I love young maids
Though my frame gaunt is growing young
There is time! There is time!
Time to give and receive bribe
For repeated looting and killing
By our own human watchdogs.
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