POEM OF THE WEEK By Ayo Oyoze Baje ,Titled HOPE

POEM OF THE WEEK
By Ayo Oyoze Baje

HOPE
These days
hope flourishes fast
in the forest
of dreams and desires.

Mushrooming
from the dark dungs of dense deceit,
cascading
from the preacher’s pulpit
and the politician’s pedestal
to the pawns and the pews.

These hours
hope is still the straw-strand saviour
to our sinking sanity
in the abyss of dark despair.

And whets the crab’s climbing claws
against the slippery mud and mire
of mounting misery.

It is
the painless koboko cane
driving the camel’s weakening hoof-steps
towards the oasis mirror.
beyond the noon-path mirage.

Hope
is the fuel that rekindles struggles,
the breathe that fans the ember
of all our
withering wishes –
a reawakening of our voiceless clamour,
of the wick in the oil
waiting for the flame.

It is the uncertain embrace
into the waiting arms
of the ebony temptress
of tomorrow.

And
at dawn
hope is the salaaming siren
in the throat of the initiated cockerel
seeking for a nuptial flight of songs.

At noon
when shadows shorten
hope rises like the labourer’s song
raised under the master’s
threatening sun
vying with
the lifting rhapsody
of the listless lark.

At dusk
Hope is the powdered smile
on the lips of whoring Lust –
bait for the preys of passion
even for the wedlock
of barren bosoms.

Still, we must all hope-
to douse the flaring flames of failure
that tomorrow will bring a brighter sun,
that the new season’s mounds will raise
new fingers of fortune,
that the market women will return
with baskets brimming
with a fruitful future,
that the hunter’s arrival
will ignite the festive fervour
of the salivating palates and plates,
that the present emergent seedlings
will raise the Iroko shades
for our eagled visions;
that today’s pregnant doubts
will be the rebirth of thunders of laughter
come the new dispensation.

We must still raise hope
even as dry cone thatches
against the toasting sun
to tease the conference of clouds
for tomorrow’s promised rain.

Hope is still the
the survivor ‘s song-
of the jaws of the jobless
of the stomach of the sacked
of the head of the homeless
of the heart of the hopeless.
Tell me, my fellow country men
What is work without hope
if not slavery?
And what is hope without work
if not the homeless sparrow
without a bower to perch on
without a will against the whims of the wind.

© 1992

An excerpt from my book:
PETALS AND THORNS