Inherited Bane


Why does death demand wages from the living
like a parasite demanding to reap
where it did not sow?

Why does it sit and wait on our doorways
insisting to be heard,
to be worshipped,
to be appeased,
like a megalomaniac, a monopolist,
a crapulent hog, a cormorant?

Why does it lurk around
our streets and shorelines,
fighting to interrupt our journeys
like a heartless bully?

Everyday we jump and leap
through walls and fences trying to outrun it
as it swirls around us like a windstorm,
reaching and pulling our clothes
and our hairs from every side,
spinning its leathery hands around us
to tie our legs and hands together
with mud, or rubbles, or anything
it can lay its hands on,
digging underneath us to uproot us,
hauling and tossing its sludge at us
from every angle.

Every day,
known and unknown clerics,
saints and sinners, masters and servants,
workaholics and lazybones,
the rich and the poor,
all pray and groan, and moan
for a divine power,
or a magic wand
to silence it forever.

Everyday we sift through sands
and rivers and air with armored sieves
for death’s primordial artifacts,
for its inoculating filaments,
for its stunning tentacles,
for its cutting incisors,
for its sanguineous proboscis,
for its virulent venoms,
but we end up with clogged strainers
and broken spatulas, and lacerated hands.

Night after night we strain our eyes
and stretch our minds to the limit
in the most sophisticated labs,
in bracing spaceships,
in ivory towers,
in secret fortified bunkers,
trying to conquer it with science,
or banish it with drugs,
but the monster has vowed
never to leave us alone.

It is an inherited bane,
a burden we must bear,
a passage we must pass,
a journey we must take,
a call we must answer.

2011.George MacLean Akurunwa