Libya To Lampedusa Poem by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

Life has been one of cruel patience
Life on ship has been so pressing
Life on ship with mists of sufferings
Dares the courage in everyone

From Libya to Lampedusa
Life has been one of cruel patience
Life has been one deep misery
Life has been one of cruel patience.

Oh, life, oh, life, oh, mean life...
Hmmm-uhmmm...

And there’s this BREAKING NEWS on television across the world.
The newsreader, shaking visibly from grief, reads...
Migrants perish on the high seas, on their way to Europe...
The ship set sail from Libya.
They borrowed the consonants
And vowels of the voyage
Of Jason in his desperate search for the
Golden Fleece.
A noble cliché says that
History repeats itself.
They sailed on with the breath of
The Pilgrims.
Oh, the Mayflower saga of 1620.... You remember?
Driven by the enormous power of Eurus
To the expansive space of Zephyr.
Waves crash mightily upon waves.
O’ Prospero, where on earth art thou?
We pray thee, halt the tempest pronto!
Halt the killing rage of the seas.
A black hulk of metal gets battered by rebellious waves
And shoals of famished sharks besiege the ship
And the poor souls of the migrants...
There’s blood upon the waves.

It holds pain
It kills dreams
It’s damning
And it’s Hell
And when it turns cynical
It kills the eternal link.

Here’s the news update!
The newsreader reads on television once again...
Europe retreated further into the blood-stained horizon
Among terrible skies.
The migrants sang their own dirges.
They fled home from hunger and starvation
And from merciless leaders
And from all manner of antagonisms
And from all manner of persecutions:
Economic, political, social, cultural.
They fled in search of King Solomon’s Mines,
Using maps and routes as outlined sketchily in
Treasure Island.
Lampedusa is their own
Treasure Island.

They had fled home
Wanting to roam freely in Rome
See the Pope
And renew their hope...

But then, the ship sank.

Epilogue
The story, so sad and awful, is drummed about the world over.