Sandison Jumbo | + Follow Poet |
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The Forgotten God

The forgotten god
 
Whose rage should burn hotter
than mine; melt the noon day sun,
dry up all thy rivers, scorch the earth, that
thy crops may burn to ashes before
thine eyes, and the heat from the
very earth upon which ye stand,
make roasted beef of thy feet?
 
Whose anger’s eruption should be more
terrifying than Mount Vesuvius,
spewing kilometer tall jets of
volcanic ash into the atmosphere, that
the very air thou breathes into
thy nostrils, be as from bellows into
a blacksmith’s forge, cooking up thy lungs,
making thy tongue be so parched, that,
in thy maddening thirst,
thine eyes will be blind to reason, and
thine ears deaf to thy folly,  and in
thy desperation, thou would
make a complete jest of thyself, in the glare
of all, and wallow in the futility of attempting to squeeze
water, out of the dust of the Sahara?
 
Whose eyes should cry
more than mine, with tear ducts
unleashing centuries of pent-up tears,
enough to rain for a decade without ceasing,
and watch thy towns and
cities flood, until the last peak is submerged,
and thy children and cattle drown
before thy very eyes and make
a dainty feast for the fishes of the seas?
 
Today, “he was the god of our fathers”
thou would say. But, would thou
have been, if I had not kept thy fathers’ fathers
before thee?
 
When I looked away,
and thy farmlands lacked rain and nourishment,
the harvest was poor,
and famine overtook thy towns,
did thy fathers not
run to my shrines with offerings of: sheep and
goats, their slaves and even their children’s blood?
Did I not re-nourish the earth,
give them bountiful harvests
and make their paupers eat like kings?
 
Who led thy fathers’ fathers
into battles as Sango or Amadioha,
with the might of lightning
and thunder going before them,
and striking terror
into the hearts of their foes,
 bringing the enemies to their knees,
groveling before thy fathers’ fathers  and
offering their lands, wives and children,
in surrender,
even before thy fathers’ first arrows left their bows,
or before their machetes left their sheaths,
to draw blood?
 
By whose knowledge as Ogun,  
that from the dust of the earth, the hands of
 thy fathers forged iron
and shaped it into countless tools,
of both war and peace, and of
merriment and shedding of blood?
 
Who taught thy fathers the seasons,
Agriculture, what herbs healed what,
and what herbs killed what,
that in sickness,
they may also have health?
 
Who as Simingi, Akaso, or Finibeso,
 taught thy fathers the navigation of the seas,
the cycles of the tides, and
the language of the fishes?
 
Who taught thy fathers how to shackle the wind,
Conjure the rain at will,
tame lightning and thunder,
commune with the spirits and ancestors
and foretell the future?
 
Should I go on? All these are in
books of thy history- both those written
by strangers who knew not my ways,
and those written by thy mis-educated children.
 
I will not let my grief at thy loss
overcome me.
I will weep for thee and
chose to forgive thy transgressions,
appear powerless in thy eyes,
as I watch thee desecrate my remaining shrines,
 call me pagan like the white skinned men
from foreign climes
and forsake my ways completely,
as thou continue to glorify foreign deities.
 
Today, thou would say “his time is long past”.
Though that may seem to be so, but
I will sit here laughing mirthlessly,
and watch thy time go,
just as I watched it come,
and as I watched thy fathers times
come and go before thee, hoping that,
if thou does not remember the ways of thy fathers,
and return to me,
thy children after thee, will.
 
They will surely return to me……….
They will return to me……
They will return to me, the forgotten god!
 
June 28, 2017

Written for "Create a character" poetry contest 
sponsored by Cecelia Hopkins-Drewer.

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