I am accustomed to sing of love
Among the pristine marigolds of dawn,
Like some poet would serenade beauty
Cushioned by the leafy caress of maids.

Between this emerald boulevard of obeche,
I am set in a burden to sing of
The pastoral poetry of my kindred
Slaving hungry in the savannah of foods.

I am set in a burden to sing of
The gaping, black effigies of houses
Cuddled by long, careless arms of fire
Of the froth-clouded, hot-headed ruler;

I am set in a burden to sing of
Ugly scraps of bodies scattered about,
Limbs and arms mashed in the mud
By the toothed tread of military tanks;

I am set in a burden to sing of
The behemoth belch of fumes cramming
The nostrils of Ethiope and Forcados,
Choking the lungs of Nun and Escravos;

I am set in a burden to sing of
The dirge of dead yam fields and barren barns,
The murmur of slick-smeared mangroves,
The baleful breath of fish like bottle.

I am set in a burden to sing of
Sore-eyed boys and girls in sunlit scramble
For crooked, rusted pipes spewing
Yellowed water like gonorrhoea-pained penis;

I am set in a burden to sing of
How mothers rumple the peace of their brow
At the slightest warble of wings above,
Like Heaven’s bread will plop in their laps;

I am set in a burden to sing of
The haste of fathers breeding cobra brood;
The wait, like Simeon’s, measured and pregnant
As their dissolution of time in alcohol;

I am set in a burden to sing of
Darkness – quotidian dictator of our homes,
The groaning pipelines beneath our earth
Promising barrels of crude abundance;  

I am set in a burden to sing of
The limping cock, the mangy dog,
The one-eyed goat, the wounded pig;
The grim graffiti of sickness and sadness;

I am set in a burden to sing of
The smashed-to-bits dugout canoe drifting
On the salted spine of scorched creeks,
And bones of fish fossilised for future;

I am set in a burden to sing of
The hunched histories of Oloibiri,
Ogoni, Odi, Umechem and Egbema;
The looming hurricane in their slow rebirth;

I am set in a burden to sing of
The nebulous Niger, the foaming flood –
But my voice is the cracked flute, shattered urn;
Its timbre wafted as ash on time’s wind.