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‘Moribund’ (Poem)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2020

By
Chinasa Abonyi
Edited by
Ernest N. Emenyonu
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Summary

Is kindness wickedness to oneself?

I thought we were taught to love

But not more than ourselves

Why then,

Why then did you give up yourself

Your beauty;

Blossoming hibiscus of the sub-Sahara

Black like ebony

Pine with avid curves

for your love for another?

Mama!

Great twine of the forest

Akiri that brings the trees in the forest together

Lend tomorrow eyes that it may see clearly

Infiltrators!

Be human again

To see the squeezed, exhausted face of the monkey

And hear the shrewd cry of the antelope

For the pains on the donkey's back is obvious.

Palms can never cover pregnancy

Devourers of nature for culture!

The earth mourns in silence

The tree twists and twitches

And the eye of the earth is epileptic already

How unfathomable you have become

Oh loving seasons!

For desires insatiably sought

Moribund

Type
Chapter
Information
ALT 37
African Literature Today
 , pp. 192
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2019

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