POEMS: Inmates of time

Prof Victor U. Chukwuma

By Victor Uzodinma Chukwuma

72. The Pilgrim’s Message

Naked to fate, I stand,

swimming through thorns

in the sky

searching for the stars.

In my pilgrimage,

the fireplace and clay pots,

the bamboo beds and tales,

and village lanes in me remain.

My soul and my mind,

my heart and my strength

remain tied to

our umbilical spirit.

Sorrow not, sing the songs,

that will remain me here,

dreams and astral projection

shall them bring to me, and me to you.

73. Am not dead

 From the lands

that dread mortals

the land of the translated,

I come and the unjust worry.

Left alone, I would stay watching

but the bondage in the land,

are shackles I must help to unknot

before belonging to hereafter.

Everyday

my feet must tread the thin air

along the cemetery path

to the hut that sang first my requiem.

At my first coming,

my cloud struck the eyes of the children:

heads barren, necks painted black,

and they told frightful tales of a ghost.

My second coming,

their lions hide behind tree backs,

waiting to see the walking white pillar

noon and my hut hosts.

At my third call

broken pots, chalks and cocks’ blood,

palm fronds and lines of libation,

all tied my hut to the shrine.

But these manacles will not cease me,

come I must, till justice is done.

For the cry of orphaned future haunts me,

and bid me come.

For when the hue of wailing stops,

I will to hereafter belong.

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.

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