Silence

Nigeria & the New Year Presidential Gift SILENCE Silence! Stillness! Silence! Inaction! All guises of an impending eruption The only sound of merriment Is in the coterie of increment I wish there could be joy in this clime Like the pleasure you get from my rhyme Our busy rails, ports and roads Are our platforms for relieving our heart-loads On boards, boldly written are our words in hues Is it our turn to be deprived of shoes? We trek the streets proclaiming a new birth While our detractors soar like birds in mirth Silence! I encounter silence everywhere I ambled Is it true that our peace has been gambled? There are only two persons I see The first person, a damsel, I glee I will never have seen her, thanks to subsidy But to Keats "beauty is truth, truth beauty" I would have fallen for her seductions But I resisted her like subsidy attractions I would have blindly succumbed, rejecting truths Now I discern why all hands protest, even youths Our pains increase yet no decrease All we patients, diagnosed for the same disease Our misery, their fortress; our words, our refuge We persist, our tears for justice in deluge Empty promises sadden our weary lobe Hence; we seem the dystopian part of the globe The second person, like the Ancient Mariner Expressed his pains and fears in this manner "Once upon a time, in their kingdom, animals – Birds, reptiles, insects, aquatic and mammals – Rejoice over the death of their brutal king In unity and hilarity, they dance and sing. 'At last,' they said, 'it’s now authority, no more power; Our words and woes will be respected in the new tower; No despot reign, but a shepherd for us all sheep, Tender-heart and loving; his promises, he will keep; Our promise land! A new captain to steer our ship He will use the mace to direct us, not as a whip' All - ignorant of the dead despot’s fairy - are whining: For he was alive and in a shepherd’s cloak, ruling" Then the tale teller asked, 'Alas, Is that their lot? Who's now leading, the shepherd or the despot?'