In Search of the Lost Tongue
They sifted through the red soil of the years,
Plucking at roots where the great forebears sleep;
Not merely dust, but salt from ancient tears,
In vaults where Oghene’s secrets buried deep,
They sought the tongue of the Urhobos.
The mother-tongue—a Vwre of vibrant gold,
That bound the Uvwie and the Okpe soul—
Now lies beneath the damp, colonial mold,
A broken Ivri, losing its control,
In Ughelli’s mist, oppressive, gray and cold.
A desperate hunt for Edoid embers lost,
By Inuivwi clinging to a fading grace;
They seek to mend the spirit, tempest-tossed,
And find the value of their rightful place,
But find a landscape utter double crossed
For in the throat where udi used to flow,
A jagged, coarse Pidgin now is spun;
The Emotes of the market-square, we know,
Have taught the children’s lips to skip and run
From the very gods that made the delta grow.
This coarse alloy, this Oibo-shadowed chime,
Has choked the wells where elders’ wisdom brewed;
The tongue of kings is smothered in the slime
Of vulgar slang and metaphors endued
With nothing but the wreckage of our time.
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