On The Gallows Once Poem by Kofi Awoonor

I crossed quite a few of your rivers,
my gods, into this plain
where thirst reigns
I heard the cry of mourners
the long cooing of the African wren
at dusk the laughter of the children
at dawn had long ceased night comes fast
in our land where indeed
are the promised vistas the open fields,
blue skies, the singing birds and abiding love?
History records acts of heroism,
barbarism of some who had power
and abused it massively of some whose
progenitors planned for them
the secure state of madness
from which no storm can shake them;
of some who took the last ships
disembarked on some far-off shores
and forgot of some who simply laid down
the load and went home to the ancestors