Hands hold tight to the loose ends of hope
As we toil and crack, night and day,
Hoeing up bits of earth and its fragile retributions.
Our crops and little beads of sweat drip to waste
On the ground’s boiling soils.
Eyeh is another name for a deceased generation.
The ones that sprout stubbornly through restive
Delays get re-greened, losing vibes of communal
Watering, ceremonial baptisms.
Birds build their nests in haste,
When bent cusp-blades sprout secretly at twilights,
Behind ethereal curtains of dawn falling
To the consternation of treacly, bitter syrups of time . . .
Is this continuous planting . . . and delirious season?
Has it come to that —when drunken war mongers
Form weapons from slats of pallid bamboo stationed
At the guard posts of violated yams and their flaccid
Tendrils?
I fear.
Such suzerainty over yellowing crops
Transcends the coats of black dust hiding from the disease
Of identity.
It is still planting season, brethren.
The deafening sounds of cannons shake the stalks yonder.
There's a smug dance of weevils on the graves of tubers.