In haste...
Behind
Our footprints
Were the scattered emptiness
Of the memories
Of them
On the shores
She left the three parties of us
Me, Samantha
And our traveler friend
They were play things for sunset fares,
She said.
Just yesterday
They were happy to be here
The young flowers now scattered about
This beach shore
Too young to be plucked
Happy to grow up into one party of laughter!
That's how we remember they were here
That's how to plant graveside flowers
For the dead
They were play things for sunset fares
They were not soldiers
They were unprotected women
They were not warriors
They were unfed afraid Biafran children
That's how to plant graveside flowers
That's how we have kept them forever
In our hearts
That's how we actualize Biafra.
This poem is a remembrance piece for the more than three million civilians, most of them children who died of starvation in Biafra land as a result of the blockade policy which the Federal side adopted to cut off the secessionist's supplies during the civil war which lasted in Nigeria from 1967 - 1970. It would be recalled that the Nigerian foremost poet, Christopher Okigbo also was lost to that tragic war. It is to Okigbo, the more than a million starved dead children, the women, everybody else that was the sacrifice red water of the secessionist nation this art is crafted. Amen.
