Wading the Tide

The Maquisards

21 Wading the Tide The Maquisards Born in chaos, baptized in chaos, schooled in chaos, have lived in chaos. People did you know them? Our brothers, our fathers, our husbands, our sisters, our mothers, our wives, those who could look into tomorrow - and knew the trend of things, tradition was being abused - to see for the good of all. Murderers! They were presented as such, people who just killed women and children without cause, but now we know the truth. Too many things were going wrong so they fought against them to set things right and let our own be our own. With strange reasons they were arraigned and shot in various home-towns like petty criminals and he, God’s prelate, adopted by the Vatican. But today, we the owners are begging from pilferers, those they fought to hold at bay. They were fired in their home-towns, accused of treason and branded maquisards, but today we know they were not maquisards, terrorists, but genuine patriots. O woe that can’t be erased, like hens and chicks frightened of the hawk, we lived, we lived and live unable to vocalize, unable to plan for our future. No, I say it is not a hawk but a mere cock soaring above with the lust for dissenter elimination. 22 Tribute Our martyrs were correct they had the eyes to see but we committed suicide directing the uninvited legionnaire- - ‘‘protector’’ to his camp. I look over the horizon, the setting sun is blazing red, tortured to death by darkness, yet tomorrow if not the same son, another daughter of ours shall rise. This time our view has changed. We shall clap at the bang... bang! I fear what I see at the top of Fako, of Kilimanjaro, and unless the God of goodness intervenes, these volcanoes, shall vent their steam and the lava shall flow. The Poet-Soldier (For Major General Mamman Vatsa) The pen and the gun eternal opposites they be; the one deceptively calm the other deadly it looks yet the more deadly is calmness. Bring not the two together for the treacherous inferiority complex of the latter shall choke the Life-force out of the former like the breath from his lungs - Okigbo. ThenMamman, the two all in one a self at war with itself. the intellect and the beast, the beast in him won and his brains like his predecessor’s splattered at a bang. ...