TWO FLAGS AND A GRAVE

 

By this somber bridge

On the sultry brow
Of this abstruse canal
In Oke Afa
The new tourist haven
For the grim-hearted
Lies the latest parody
Of our national honor

 

Not a world-class monument

To glorify the Arts
Or an eighty-foot statue
To epitomize our coalesced vanity
But a grave
The size of my grandfather’s orchard
A restless resting place
For the innocent damned
 

For such are the importuned few

Who paid with their many dreams
For a multitude’s folly
As once again the hapless masses
Die needlessly in a tragedy
That could have been averted
Had conscience and honesty
Formed turgid threads
In our national fabric
 

The drama must have been

The sick coinage
Of a black-hearted playwright
For the very bombs we bought
With our tax-payer’s sweat
To act for us a shield
From hostile foes
Has thus so wickedly
The same tax-payers slain
 

Oh pain and dismay

To see their teeming throng
Moved as a sea of termites
Fleeing the tongues of a hungry flame
Deadly explosions all about
Booms, blasts and deafening bangs
They fly unheeding crazed by fear
Into the watery arms
Of our fearsome canal

And for their sacrifice what had power to say?

Naught but the usual propaganda
An opportune time
For emergency campaigns and paltry relief
Cosmetic tears
And well-rehearsed sighs
And in Oke Afa
Two flags and a grave
A constant signpost
To our collective debris

 _________________________________________________________

Do we remember them at all? well this one is for the innocent damned of the January 27 2002 Bomb Blast, Lagos, Nigeria.