Laments for the Children of this Age
Before the sun rose in the West
And here set
My father’s rickety voice
The soldier who fought the village wars
The army that guarded the city of men’s minds
The medicine that killed the diseases
The adolescent heads
And big babies in the villages.
The time I drank
The forest herbs:otagbagbana, ,enache
And from the domestic ebee,
The wild and domestic shrubs
Cooked my syrups.
Days women cooked: men, children ate,
That sun has set
For a new from the West.
And now men for the women cook,
Fathers orders from their children take,
With children from the same dish eat.
Children who are children of the West
Have left their hands unwashed,
No longer remember their forebears’
names
And not keeping the moon cycles,
They know not the funeral rites
But many winding paths.
Priding selves in being jet-fast,
And bullet smart
And women wear their shame as garments
To the market and meeting places
Where men are gathered.
And the pigeon -pea,
The yam farms withering
Onobuleji’s part has had a step too many
In their budding and flowering thresholds.
I lament for the children of this age,
Who, love-fettering,
Rocking with laughter
Scorn the drowning
The aged
The ragged.
They sit and forget
Idling in gossip and revelry
Telling only machines
And beggaring books
To do human living
And neighbourly acts.
They know not the grass,
Even the intangible winds,
Snail-slippery things,
