Edward Ndopu Poet Free verse

The Great Ordeal

the marked must go quietly in the night
without a word of farewell
through the trembled dust
down the dark road from which they say
no one returns

the gods who made Africa
strike fear upon the living
comfortless
vituperative
rampaging through our lands:
freedom is a hoax

we abandon ourselves
to the crudely dug dungeon
the pit is boiling like a volcano
dark blood seething ceaselessly
so many souls within its recesses
so many mournful eyes
so many broken hearts
we cannot cry, we cannot move

this pit is an endless pursuit of misery
there is no escape, there is nowhere to go
bit by bit our bodies are dying
and our strength disappears
we lose our sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch
hell lies about us in our innocence
we wonder who will be the last, the very last,
to seek this place for what it was:
they'd neither like nor believe
the horrors no God could have allowed

we are sure only that from
our true liberation movement
we have disappeared
we simply do not exist
no comrade-in-arms squeezes
a fake tear for us
noticing we are not there
when did he last see any of us?
he cries out we are disloyal,
have betrayed the cause
and all the while
we are labouring in the dungeons
we dig for him
we dig to be sure
he surely is next on the blacklist

the supporters deny our disappearance
and with the human rights watcher,
no record
nobody, it appears, misses us enough
to report
it is easier to die than to remember

and where do we come from?
where did the liberation struggle take us,
the combat,
the underground resistance?
prison? protest? mere conviction?
it was a time of revolution
there were no fantasies
there was simply the beyond-endurance
and then the fleeing-into-exile

we are the illicit cargo marooned
in dungeons guarded by scare-crows

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Maureen McGreavy Pigeon Tart March 17, 2017 at 9:53 AM Wow. Potent penetrating pen. 7 Maureen McGreavy Pigeon Tart March 17, 2017 at 12:02 PM I don't think you entirely give up, you just have a few thousand more pages to write ;) xomo! Edward Ndopu March 17, 2017 at 10:04 AM Thank you, Maureen... I'm still trying to penetrate the wall! Each time I attempt to do so, I'm held back by this heavy indescribable emotion which pulls me back: then I give up!