BIAFRA ( SONNETS ON POST COLONIAL AFRICA'S FIRST GENOCIDE) LIV

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“NIGERIA names, guides the dead past the JANUS-GATE that looks both ways to the past, the morrow – then I grant your souls th’ great return, child. The POET-SOLDIER’S wrath is th’ might of th’ living ’gainst th’ dead. Absent their naming, the dead must, perforce, languish in the harsh sun of day: poisoning the land; poisoning the marriage bed; blighting the womb of woman; damning the unborn; birthing but the stillborn – damned, outcast; withering the crop - before ripened, locust sown; if harvested blighted of mold; rotted on the vine; rot corrodes the fiber of the republic; plaything of rebels, perfidy’s flag. NIGERIA knows: when the living spurn the dead, the dead curse a double measure.”





 

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