Fathers Poem by John Agandin

There is a house, half in ruins
At the other end of the village
Battered and ravaged by wind and rain
Half the walls lie prostrate
As in obeisance to an unseen god.
The mud roof has fallen through
The thatch roof cries for a layer
All the timber is rotten with age
And there is no gate or door
To cover the nakedness of that house
If only there is a father to build!

There is a field down yonder
Where thick and tall weeds grow
And strangle the infant crop;
The millet is yellow and dwarfish
The corn is stunted and cobless
And the cowpea run podless
There is no hope for a harvest
All are accounted as forage
For no blade to the sward is laid.
Because there is no father to till!

There is a boy and sister in the city
Their beauty you must look hard to see
For their nostrils run like streams
And their nails are long and black.
Flies and all insects go after them
They sleep in sight of the highway
Screeching tires and tooting horns
Are their music by day and by night
Both are pregnant without child!
Their coverings are over-sized
And dyed with many shades and hues
But cannot cover all their sores.
They tramp the streets, dust to dawn
For there is no father to provide!

They grow up but slowly
Each left to his own devices
He is grimmy and heartless
And is a terror on that highway
He rapes and plunders for a living
And for herb and gin sold his soul
She lies with men and hounds
And bears a child before breasts
Littering the land with fetuses
Whose cries fill the air with dread
But she is long deaf and dead
Because there is no father to guide!

A mother sits helpless beside
A shack half eaten by mice
Sorrow and penury has withered
The once glowing dark obsidian skin.
Her sunken eyes no longer beamed
Her ample bosom is shriveled
Her generous back long wasted
Her slender waist no longer swayed
Her lips are dry and unkissed
Her heart unloved, hips uncaressed
For there is no man, nay, no lover!
To protect that once admired beauty

Father is the sage and the seer
The guide, the guardian, and the lover.
The hands that build, that till, that make
That provide, that protect, that care
Who can make a father?