As the rain gathers
Your grave torments
The rot of the soil
Where blood turns oil
For the barrel drunkards
In pot-belly shells
“…like the Ogoni
Battered, bruised,
Brutalized and almost buried”
Your eyes tears to see
The fishes coughing blood
Vegetables strangled by petrol
Infants pant of cancer
Pipeline becomes lifeline
To swim ashore to safety
Where tankers sit like bankers
You queried the earth
For spouting oil
And the gods for not
Drying its wide well
Your protest bang loud
Against the loot of roots
Belonging to the poor farmers
Ogoni’s Forest of Flowers
Becomes a desert of dragons
Basi & Co attempts a suicide
Sozaboy ends up a casualty
Of harrowing dead history
Ken was keen
Warning them of the eco-war
They had began against his world
The junta boots your throat
Marred your nights with threat
Their next words was a death sentence
On you and the eight others
As this rain summons
Your songs wake the thunder
Of Okigbo in echoes of gold
The dead fishes rose
Mangroves forest raptures
The rain forest resurrects
And swamps bubble alive
The Junta shivers in their shell
The council can no longer hold
For your grave have broken the cave
Of their hidden crimes of decays
Rain! Rain! Rain!
Ken Saro-Wiwa reign
And flush their black rums
Of evil away from our lands.
©Uche Uwadinachi
