It seems I have been known
By fruits only for a brief season sown
True, I do not deny my sins:
That I kept you out in the cold;
That for trifles, your love I sold.
Now your anger hits me like a nightingale’s song.
Yet mirthless like a battle gong.
Your blink at me, venom filled sting.
I dread your muteness for it locks me in a cage
And It dares me not to smile while you rage.
I made haste as the morning sun rose
To catch a glimpse of my Rose.
But my desires dry like the morning dew;
It would not flow and let me enter
This circle of which you are the centre
Why? Is it because I missed my way
That you let me watch Canaan drift away?
Because I faltered (ever so slightly),
You deny me the treasures in the sands
Of our conceived Promised Land?
I fear now that what I daily crave
May elude me until I see my grave!
I seek now my factory mood
That I may play out your demands
But my heart still trembles from your reprimands.
Your voice is the only thing that keeps me sane,
I crave same still. Yet I’ll beckon on it never again.
‘Sanity ‘ should be ‘Me and You’ knitted together, forever.
But you have chosen a path
That pries us apart!
So, hand me that hate,
Take a leap,
Leave me and live!
meet the poet: Owokere A. Etim
