Memories

Dark is the night and full of terrors The dark powers that leads to war And the fireball is strangled beneath the horizon The universe slowly loses it’s candescence The sky is set aglow with dimmed lights from littered stars But the night-lamp gift to a world so dark is Missing In Action and goes without notice In the ate the common room sit we by the fireplace and watch the woods burn to throw out sparks from flames so bright That makes the eyes go blind As we wait with arms round our chest to receive Mbaapostoli yam seedlings sent into the fire to roast We baptize them in the oil to send them on a long and twisted journey down our throats We had listened more than a sum of units from years last To the sound of crickets chirping in the bushes And we had always liked the noise that they made behind the huts in the holes they bore in the soft earth We often chased after fireflies as the night fell upon us Under a sky lit by the night lamp And held them between our fingers to light the way But we stumble in the presence of darkness For their light isn’t meant for eyes to see the way The ivungu Owl now hoots a call in the forest Deep, dark and fearful Fear fans us cold and sets our unseated hearts knocking against our rib cages We laugh at our shadows casted upon the mud walls behind None in the world has such a big head but you