January Fifteen Poem by Victor Okechukwu Anyaegbuna

A date my famished generation had with history
when our visions in the mould
began, gradually, to deny
the beauty and freshness of dawn.

The day the end of our good old days began
And the stench of cattle dung
that nourished unfolding rose petals
began to foul our rising dreams.

And the fragrance of beautiful flowers
began to give way to the stench of putrefying flesh;
foretelling nightmares
of pregnant toddlers and morbid baby skeletons
stooling blood in the terrain of overfed vultures.

The day beautiful dreams of our fathers
began to crumble,
and vanity dared their sacrifice
for the greatness of our nation,
through discipline instilled in us:
Half a century and five wholesome years gone,
And they with it.

The day we thought hostilities had ended,
After thirty months of gallantry, sorrow and waste.
One wholesome muddled year of confusion
above the golden age we ought to have celebrated
as rising stars in the firmament of brilliance and unity.

But, alas we stood in virtual nakedness and graves
With sharp brains and unexplored talents subdued;
caged in haziness of envy and stupor of our victors.

We emerged from physical malnutrition,
and transited to mental starvation
with dearth of a visible hereafter,
as our highly adorable parents
hoped against hope in the abyss
of our aspiring unssettled minds
beleaguered by oppressive conquerors in our land.

They mocked us with a beautiful reassuring slogan
"No victor no vanquished"
but all the life time labours of our awesome sires
were skinned with twenty pounds
for a whole lifetime of efforts and struggle.

So far the skies have foretold, with gloom,
the inequity of our rocketing effort
against sloth of unprovoked minds
that saw a spade and called it a gun:
Even the climate has since changed in protest!

Now, after the rising sun from the mystical East
fired all Nature with power in its loin,
and weak, retiring, sank slowly, morosely
into the western horizon, beyond dry clouds
that denied rainbow, and mocked
rising hopes of dusk that slipped away in darkness
to prepare for a momentous new dawn!
This too, so perfidiously betrayed!

January 15,2021
Amuwo-Odofin, Lagos, Nigeria