The Testimony Of Mara Poem by Kojo Owusu

From the precincts of despair sing I
By what kind of death concerns me not.

I tread the path of learning brightened by the outstretched boughs
Of Siva and dread not the demise immanent in the subtle plough
Of grey when silence assumes treasonous visage in vaults and catacombs
In withered feat the wise are dragged by the hands of tyrants
And their wisdom is deprived of its freedom by slander, and they are plundered For their Superior intelligence
Without the opportunity of making a defense?

Hemlock from the river of Hades was invoked to thwart and warp the genius and ingenuity
Of Socrates wandering with subtle questions in the acropolis and re enacted
In the open air theatre by lads destined to be servitors when the sages
Congregate and the hills resound the ancient assemblage
In their midst was debris the philosophic icon on the cairns of the academy
He died for his ideas to resurrect on the fountains of ignorance
To flow in the rational verve of man flow in the conscience of man

In samos was famed Pythagoras burnt but his ideals withstood the conflagration
Of conspired ire and in an hour the land was covered with sand
The tumultuous sea raging against the calamitous sacrifice

Then the wise king advented himself from patriarchal descent
And the Jews murdered him and destruction swept on the travails of the barren
Destruction crying in the withered hearth in anguish they were expelled in anger
And in every land scatted
'On this account, lo, I have written for thee this record, [touching] that which I have by careful observation discovered in the world. For the kind of life men lead has been Carefully
Observed by me. I tread the path of learning and traverse the expanse of wisdom And from The study of Greek philosophy have I found out all these things, although they Suffered Shipwreck when the birth of life took place.'

A prophet has no honor in his country
Pythagoras Lived but in the statue of Hera
Socrates in Plato subsisted and the wise king the laws