Poem titled:  So their Wailings were Heard

So the night would usher in the calamitous weeping fury? (L1)
So death would mischievously snatch a suckling infant from the cuddling of its mother? (L2)
Are you being addicted to our blood, or yet you can't hear mama's cry? (L3)
For how long do you wish to stay and prey on us, or you wish to leave no longer? (L4)
                     

So the flag shall be flown on top of the hills to honor their souls? (5)
So we shall morn and honor our kinsmen and children even though we should have shun death's claims?  (6)
Are we going to entrust their bodies and cries to the past as we did the last?  (7)
Or are we to clamp and dampen our ignorances and our blindness to cast?  (L8)

So their wailings were heard aloud!?
So we would have lit the torch and march ahead!? (L9)
So our mistakes and foolishness we wouldn't have allowed? (L10)
Were they muttering in pain when the burden of the hills they bored? (L11)
Did the waters wash the sins of land with their bodies abound? (L12)

So their wailings were heard with the rumbling thunderstorms of the past? (L13)
So they could be sacrificial lambs of our own stinky accustomed disremember of our lost? (L14)
So we are going to entrust their bodies to the cosy soil? (L15)
And we are going back to the seasons of foolery and again and again we act a foil. (L16)

(In memory of the victims of every event in Sierra Leone and the world at large)
©Amadu Wurie Jalloh
®SAWN Archives