The Gullible Companions! Poem by Olaleye Azeem Oladipupo

Oh ye Earth, Air, and Ocean!

Ye gullible Companions
Ye loyal Minions
How proficient with great agility!
You gave up your magnanimity
for this onerous trade
Ye subservient renegades!

Oh ye Earth,

In you they prospered
All of them, their women, their lasses and lads
You provided for their nation
chow and genial habitation
You were a loyal friend
They apprize you end-to-end
But you have failed them!
You built up Trenches
and created Infantries
Your Kingpin lured them to armistice
And they went eagerly without artifice
swept along by a wave of patriotism
Soon, though, their enthusiasm
turned into bitterness
You kept throwing them
against barricades of barbed wire
and barrages of Machine-gun fire
Then, ardently, you created gaping holes
gulping the dead ones
and gobbling up many things
from under the ruins

Ah! Ye Air,

You likewise
betrayed your pals!
Merrily they rode on your wings
with all of their things
How soon you forgot!
You gave them life that cannot be bought
They breathe and fared well
But now, you’ve turned against them
Flinging rockets, several airships,
bombs and bricks
and dispatching artillery fires
Still, you didn’t withdrew or retire
Poisonous gases you also set free
and you kept swinging corpses

And even ye Ocean,

Why have you allied with your peers?
You forsook your grandeur
and relinquished your elemental task
and took up this malevolent charge
Tossing battleships
Spewing forth submarines
Hurling missiles and shells
Swigging your old friends
and piling them at the beach
debris of their stiffs

Ye three traded your scruples
for this work of ruin and doom
allowed yourselves to be deceived
by this malicious Kingpin
And at the ending
what are your feats?
Is it the Hopeless Casualties?
The Crying Widows and
the Hungry Orphans?
Or the Bleak Desolate Towns?

Your Supremo – War!
Deviously allured you triad
turned you hostile to your erstwhile pals
Oh War, your Master Ally!
I salute its treachery and guile
and its works with unparalleled diligence
only to leave the world in wistfulness

Its deceit knows no bound
Ah! I must admit!