At This Wake, None Keep Vigil

At This Wake, None Keep Vigil…* Time longer than rope, chokes hearts dangling in the reality of struggle; refuted victories mimic life of children without mothers; widows veil their grief, wailing in excruciating silence. Fragments of men, void of hope, count their dead; communal graves swell with daily souls of the dust. (Indeed, these are truly the wretched of the earth.) In the neap tide of sorrows, mourners wade the blood left by Pilate’s children. In the stale winds of time, woe is me, cries the fore shaken land; lamenting the scriptures, echoing Freneau: They saw their country’s woe. Decaying bodies, stacked like sliced, molded bread, released spores of death to praying mourners, praying: give us this day, our daily bread… Like a sobbing bosom void of tears, life sags on; and the children of Sisyphus continue to struggle: guided by the warrior ghost of hope. In the meanwhile, the on looking world veils Itself with its sacred sealed silence: At this wake, none keep vigil… None. *A line from the poem, “Recession”, by Wole Soyinke