Gone Are the Days

I look back to the halcyon days When Mrs Johnson, A comely widow, ran fruitful Errands for the new railway, and for Our undeveloped district. A frail, little maid in green cardigan And sable wool hat for new mourners, She read the New Testament With zest, from Matthew to Revelation. And she battled with the stress of inheritance At the foot of her husband’s death in a Civil war. Her only son had died in civil stress. . . Before then, She was a merry image of festal seasons, Full of godly gap-toothed mirth. Her inheritance, from the ceremony of death, Were mere effigies With hearts of calumny —like cruel Neighbours who gossip from dawn To dusk, speaking no iota of truth in January, nor bearing good witness in December. Among them? Divorces, viragoes, astute harlots, and Celebrated proprietors of bordellos. Mrs Johnson laments the presence Of a blinding yellow equatorial sun. Says she, ”Misery in equator courses Across the waist of here; Stress and agony have built adobes Among us, And the Harmattan has departed with her Cold . . .” In the pall of this agony, Snakes! Now, shadows of floods rise high, Like the tsunamis of restless Asia, The height of disconsolate mountains. Grey elephants trumpet in trepidation Sallow, ululating leopards break the skins of Their drums while summoning their kinsmen For a hurried parley before the sun sinks . . . Poor Mrs Johnson is in the midst of it all — Like an eye in its own storm!