(For Mary who died of cancer)

You stole my youth before I knew it.
I was a soaring eaglet about to begin
my journey of exploration
before you ruffled my tender feathers
with your abrasive hands.

I was the blazing star
that stole the eyes of many
before you crept in at night
and mottled my gleaming garment.

I was the sweet melody
that tickled every ear
before you subtly killed
the syllables of my symphony.

Now I am grey and old to you.
I have become another spent grain,
another bastardized word,
another anachronistic cliché,
too familiar to you that you know
the number of wounded cells
in my veins.

Now I am grey and old to you,
I have become another shadow to you,
the wine that soured in your mouth,
the old blind robin. And no matter
how loud and how well I sing
I am no more than a wind
howling on deaf ears.

But as you are tearing down my walls
of defense with your callous hands,
Jehovah Rapha is erecting new ones.
As you are turning off the lights of the day,
Jehovah Jireh is kindling the lights
of the stars and the moon for me
to see my path through the night,
bestowing upon me the courage and faith
to cross the lines you drew for me not to cross,
and leap over your walls of offense
and plough through your ferocious winds,
and conquer your sinister waves
to arrive at the shore of a new dawn
with dreams as high as the heaven
that holds my greatest fancy,
dreams whose only limitation
is the withering hands of the earth.

Sorry for my stories of woes.
I know you love the earth:
its sunshine, its rain, its rainbow,
its stars, its moon, its galaxies,
its oceans, its mountains.
These are the handiworks of God.

I am writing about the handiwork of man,
about the angry earth
we have polluted and equipped
to poison and kill us.
I am writing about the angry earth
we have inundated with nuclear radiations,
and drenched with the intoxicating wine
of industrial sewage,
the earth we have coated with deadly
cyanides of radiator coolants,
the earth we are suffocating with the carbon fumes
of automobile and locomotives,
and daily strangulating with a host
of other toxins and poisons.

I am writing about the handiwork of man,
about our avian, our bovine,
our porcine, our fish farms,
and other edibles we constantly feed
deadly hormones and chemicals
to fatten for the market;
and about our vegetables and crops
we daily dust with harmful chemicals,
that turn around to poison us.

I am writing about the selfish omnivorous earth
we have fattened so fast that now
we cannot satisfy its deadly appetite.
I am writing about the angry earth
we have turned into a dark cavernous pit,
into a smelly and bloody abattoir
with scuds, missiles, canons,
and gun powder.

I am writing about the earth at war with us,
and the earth we are at war with,
the war that the price is the life
of our children, our brothers, our sisters,
our fathers, and our mothers.

Sorry, but we all will pay the price,
one way or the other.
And one day, you too
will pay the price.

2011.George MacLean Akurunwa