Gone are broken hearts, rags of sail — Uncredited (Nigeria Magazine)

Gone are broken hearts, rags of sail,
snapped paddles and saddle-nosed heart-
beats!
Gone are the cackling calls, the wistful
smiles,
the footloose prophesies about coming-of-
age!

The handclasped compromises are now
theorems for teachers;
smoked reflections will be smokeless
perceptions.

Years of hot blood and white sun
of bush battles and hectoring heroes;
Years of fashionable pulse-rates and
nibbling promises,
of rememberd sagas and forgotten epics;
Years that will make scaffoldings out of
bones;
Years that will render sightless the fore-
seeing eye.

Shall we then hold up mirage mirrors
to our hopes and fears, our shadows and
substances?
Shall we let sunlight seal our eyes with its
gestures
or turn grey springs and sprites into green?

The years ahead are cemeteries of the
years behind.
The secrets of a questing mind are its
inheritance.

Man knots his will around the world of
speech and silence.
God sends the thundercrash only when
the heavens permit.

We shall read our palms again to discern
the past
and bury the future in the waters of our
credulity.
We shall look upon the joints of time and
tear
together with gongs of flames and
castanets of aim
and leave behind our stable-doors
sirens that shake the leaves out of the
night
and shut the light in tigrish eyes.