In Search of the Lost Tongue

They journeyed back to the past Digging deep into archives vast Day and night they laboured on Unearthing bones from ancient tombs In search of the lost tongue The mother tongue of Urhobos The rope that bound the people as one Long-lost in the rubble of Ughelli Under the wreckage of the colonial masters In the ultimate search by traditionalists To recover this precious Edoid artifact And to reclaim their native charms What they found has putrefied Foul pidgin flying out of the whole From the mouth of their offsprings English Pidgin, full of vile expressions And flowery metaphors Has adulterated their true mother tongue The tongue with which elders conjured words divine Has lost its power in slanging