Philip Abayomi Olorunfemi Poet Ballad

The Journey He Endured

I am a pilgrim of pavements,
a nomad of numbered highways,
forever on transit
transversing trembling states.

Morning moves me,
afternoon absorbs me,
night nurses my nudging wheels.

I fear not the night
that velvet vastness
though it whispers
of wolves in human skin,
bandits blooming in bushes,

kidnappers
clockless, faceless,
forecast by none.

Faith fuels me.
Hope holds the steering of my heart.

O Lagos–Ibadan lords of the wheel,
your vehicles cough like consumptives,
bronchial buses breathing brokenness
a little motion,
a loud lamentation;
a mile of movement,
a meadow of malfunction.

Metallic skeletons stall and sigh,
tyres tired,
engines enraged,
gears groaning grief.

Then blame
brittle as bald tyres
is flung at government,
as though gullies grew by gossip alone.

From Lagos to Ondo State
my journeys jolt into night-crawling
slow serpents sliding
through the spine of the nation.

Yet I do not despair.
For night is cool,
a calm cloak
smooth as mercy,
soft as whispered psalms
save for the sudden
shadows of steel and sin.

Still
I believe.

Roads will rise renewed.
Potholes will perish.

Drivers will drive
not coffins of combustion
but chariots of care.

And this long, looping journey
this endurance of engines and fears
shall become
a testimony:
that transit is trial,
and trial,
triumph
in transit.

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