Well, What Do You Know? Poem by Haruna Garba

Apart from your grievances,
what else do you know?
You trading on grievances you're stuck with,
they trading on sorrows they're stuck with-
elsewhere, men trading-in their wishful wares-
Well, what do you know?

You who are stuck with old incurable plague,
what makes you think you can purge yourself?
You who shy away from viability
and seek refuge in those, right on its way-
what makes you think you are doing a meek thing?

You solely live on legacies
How can you be any the wiser
while the forefathers outsmarted were?
Ball of fire as you believe to be,
the rogue elephant you think you are,
the rebel you feel you should be
alas, you are only deceptively got at
straight into some hands have walked in
It was all planned even as the ancestors were up
Is worst lure ever-let one go against himself

They couldn't be any the wiser themselves
while the infiltrators were a shade too smart.

Stealing their ways right into the core
Excelling more than you do in thy ethic
How could you be any the wiser?

Scouting for controversial loopholes,
they grimly capitalize on them.
Nothing easier-
to coerce bitter cousins into mortal brawls.

Nothing like being wolves in sheep's cloth

Blending lineage by maternal means,
they have become mothers of kings.
Excelled in perfect plots,
they have fingers in every pie.
But then when the head is a plant
What else do you expect?
The whole land becomes a porous pot

The citadel ever a solid fortress,
up there brawls get manufactured
to slim out multiplicity in the populace.
Of course, is no loss for sworn enemies
But devoured by dismal prejudice,
the nickel will never ever fall