Guest Poem for Introspection: memory too forgets by tosin gbogi

i

how does a seemster singe his country
without threading into treason

how does he say his mind
without losing his mind

how does he singe for instance bars
behind which bards were banished to rest

of the kindly hearts of hope, muzzled
by cassowaries wandering with letters of death

of the evenings hence that dissolved like mist
faded into darkness

and the seagull cries
shaded into sadness

ii

time stands unblinkered as a pillar of witness
between that night and this twilight, the same

bastards who looted the barns
yanked the yams off their resting earth

how does a seemster look and see, singe the same
soldiers, the same barracks

not that the one has gone and the other has remained
but that both hanker after a frozen mission of tyranny

after the same manure
fertilizing silence

the same manicure
mangling nails, mangling wails

and a single alkyd, a single script
from which were painted plans for yesterday crypts

into which, without parole or mercy
dissent was holed up to die

iii

to choose between a jester and a despot
that is the question

in a season of murder
when forgetting strangles history once again

how really does a seemster singe this unreason
without losing his reason . . .

_______________

Tosin Gbogi is the author of the tongues of a shattered s-k-y (2012).