OF LONELINESS

It is not only when I am alone
That I feel cold hand of desertion
Loneliness gnaws at me all the time
I tipped with love, not returned
Like water on back of a fowl
Poured out without a receptacle

After the clattering noises of children
Young boys and girls find their nests
The babbling crowd only an illusion
The rumbling thunder roars the return
Of dry season and cold harmattan wind
I sat under the eve listening to the songs

Choral camp fire that lit the night sky
Reduced to a heap of ash and charcoal
Like the stars above twinkling by night
In silent distance when I close my eyes
Generations of faceless men gone by
Testify to the aloneness in the graves

Being unable to find you, enforced
By the absence of depth in darkness
Tell me by the coded secret signs
Will the bird return to build her nest
When the trees bloom, wet with rains
And the sun shines upon the greens?