The nation's memory is under assault/From marinated murmurs and slanderous slurs/The journey from hate to holocaust/Indeed is perilously short
Parables from Our Recent Polls
I
The journey from hate to holocaust
is perilously short. . . .*
In the national ballot just concluded:
Many voted their tribe
Many, their tongue
Many saw nothing holier than
Crosses and Crescents
In the polling booth
Utterly mesmerised by
The poisonous correspondence
Of region and religion
Many dug up skeletal skirmishes
From the nation's graveyard
Many were already glowing from
The flames of fires yet unborn
War of words
Words foretelling wars
About who owns the land
And who is owned by the land
Bilious boasts, un-tethered tantrums
Shameful shibboleths once again
At the seething gates: blind swords from
The armoury of the mouth
The nation's memory is under assault
From marinated murmurs and slanderous slurs
The journey from hate to holocaust
Indeed is perilously short
II
When does a friend become a foe
How does a trusted neighbour suddenly
Turn a neigh-bore saddled with count-
Less stereotypes and deadly definitions
On streets ominously loud with othering appellations
Whose jagged tones unnerve the ear?
How does Intolerance hatch into a fire-combed cock
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The moment Intemperance undoes the egg?
Legatees of a hasty amalgamation
Whose mongrel congregations have never learnt
To adult into a bonding whole, when shall we begin
To see something good in the divinity of our difference?
And so, another ballot bedlam
And its barbarous aftermath
Cyber mobs wild with imprecations and virtual assassinations
Their reptilian malevolence, their deadly untruths
Unhappy that nation which brings out
The worst in its people
Unhappy the people who only bring out
The worst in their nation
Pogroms often begin
With the first misbegotten Word
Ye Flamethrowers of the current Nigerian war,
Remember Rwanda!
* These two lines are from "Ode to Hate", Pages from the Book of the Sun: New & Selected Poems, 2002.
Niyi Osundare, one of Africa's foremost poets and academics, is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of English, University of New Orleans.
