The Other Side Of The City Poem by Tony Adah

I thought this road led to somewhere
Here in Calabar where my village folks
Think that I am in Europe or America
I am following the main road, paved
And turning right to where
It is unpaved, dusty and littered
With all manners of rubbish
Some airborne and flying like kites.

I can believe this not
That this is within the purview
Of the garden city - my own state capital
With this wanton squalor
Old stick-mud -smeared houses, thatch roofed
And moss-grown walls of fences
And sulphuriated breath choking stinks
Rising from the yawning squalid drains.

And aged plantain trees painfully bending
With the load of their bunches over their heads
Their stems adorned in brownish old leaves
Drooping like a masquerade
The curved and still fingers
Of the bunches greeting the world.

Down the streets if they can be called streets
Is a conurbation of churches
In howls and hums of hymns
And nearby crèches add the echoes
Of their rhymes in a town
Modernity has refused to espoused
I am here lost in the filth of this suburb
Looking for for my auto service man.