By Victor Uzodinma Chukwuma
32. Am return
Am return, you asked me.
The Sun’s rags
Have left here wet;
The gods’ hats left in the rains.
Am return, you asked me.
The shinning alters
Now host refuse from the kitchen,
Lost and forgotten in high heaps.
Am return, known I before,
I should not have left the village rim.
Worst still, could have drank of sacrilege,
And danced happily under the jeering canopy.
Am return, who will buy my seedlings
In the face of their harvest.
The aliens’ fruitage have crippled
Thoughts for the land and you gods.
Sorrow my soul, our gods are exiled,
Their Teary eyes in vain wait beckon
From Nero’s drunken choristers
Whose blood feed the stable flies.
32. The light of God
After the third crow,
The light
Will its emancipation drip
From the metallic crypt.
The jailers bastion will
No longer stand
As the tremor of awareness
Sweeps through the cage.
The aliens’ shackles torn,
The carnation
Will give more blend
To the wind of the day.
Then the bond of Old
That speaks one,
And acts as one
Will resurrect…
Victor Chukwuma, Professor of Physics, renowned for his immense contribution to the development of Astronomy and Space Science in Nigeria, is a Fellow of the Astronomical Society of Nigeria and the Nigerian Institute of Physics.