Sojourners Poem by Kris Atta Pappoe

SOJOURNER


When the primal dust has settled
And wide-eyed in stupefied wonder,
We pick up the broken shards,
Of our invincible selves,
When we raise ourselves from
Ignoble positions of defeat the lowly dust.
And hear the jeers and boos
Of those who but yesterday,
Were part of our pomp and pageantry,
Shall we then believe
The truth of the five cowries
Face up
On the diviners mat?

Will the panic rush of the vestal Virgins
From the sacred streams,
Defiled by strangers who know nothing
Of our land and its sacred laws..
Shall their anguish cries,
And the telltale bloodlets
Between their thighs, tell us anything?
Shall we then look at the cracks
In our citadels and Edifices,
And realize their ultimate destinations?

Then, shall we realize
That our genesis has been the beginning
Of our death?
And that the long odyssey of our people
Was the tail-end of a tale begun
Long ago in frititi
When the sun was young?

Shall we then be prepared now
About things certain,
As we have been about the shadows,
Realizing that we were just part of the
Moving stream,
And that the things so sacred to us,
Were but milestones
Pointing the road to where we should end?
Shall we then respond,
When the cowries whisper
To us our true names?