The Song of the Endangered Trees
We are living beings too.
We too have sorrows, pains, sufferings, tears,
Joy and happiness as well as the right, like yours,
To survive on earth.
We provide you with flowers, fruits, what a cool shade
And the most precious oxygen--you know well.
It is you who consume all the fruits we bear,
The weight of which makes our boughs bow down.
Nevertheless, how ungrateful you are, o men,
You go on cutting down mercilessly our kind bodies
With axes and saws, by cutting you want to wipe out
Our existence from earth. Fie! Have you ever thought that
If we do not exist on earth, you too will be uprooted
From earth like the dinosaurs?
O the killer unkind men, is our body gigantic our enemy?
Why do you get envious when our high head
Goes to touch the roof of the sky?
Can we not be tall on the God's earth as you are pigmy?
When you hurt our golden bodies with sharp axes,
We cry out in pain; listening to our cry, the wind trembles,
The song-birds lamenting fly far away, the forest animals
Getting disoriented start running here and there,
And curses from the sky start raining upon your heads.
Remember, o men, it is our destruction that will make
Your graves on earth.
Copyright © Sayeed Abubakar | Year Posted 2024
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