A SOMBER NIGHT

From your brittle voices
Sing the elegy of broken dreams
The dirge must begin

Light your torches
Let their glow revive smothered spirits
Let their flames mask
Skunk of rotten bodies
Feasted upon by gloating flies

Light your torches
Our fallen brothers should know no
Darkness on their journey to rest
Light your torches
For brothers whose shroud
Is their own blood

Light your torches
Illuminate the faces of masquerades
Behind veils of ethnicity and religion
Illuminate herders’ rods
Transmuted into riffles
That turn us into corpses

Light your torches
Why would stray eyes
Not see this fire engulf us?

Light your torches
Even if the steam of
Sorrow streaming from our souls
Flirts with the fury in our hands
Combusts into a ball of hell
And raze us into a rubble of ashes

By Oluwafemi Babasola

Biography:

Oluwafemi Babasola employs poetry and his short stories to express his thoughts and beliefs about life, the inequality in the society and emotions of the heart.
Oluwafemi’s poems have appeared on Bravearts Africa, Praxis Magonline, Kreative Diadem, African Writer, Parousia and Nantygreens. He lives in Benin, Nigeria. You can follow him on twitter @babasola10on10.