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
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