Mourner@Lisa

Mourner@Lisa
(Come, Let Us Outlive Our Loss)

I
On a canvass taunt and frayed
Mona Lisa’s sultry face,
Dimpled still, requests my gaze.
But this haze – it drains my pace
Of stay – to lay mind to place;
Embrace of the sheaves of Fate –
What, then, sowed these: Love or Hate?

II
In Nigeria’s Ogun State:
There they lay – but not in state;
In a crater smouldering still –
Where their creeds and deeds are still.

III
Young and old of sundry cross,
Now are shorn of all their dross.
Bereft – now they have their plus.
Plonk! A Crossroads; then, a burst
Of empyrean glow or dusk.
What resolved as Albatross,
Met Resolve as dust-to-dust.

IV
Mourner: Let Lisa live on
In your heart, her picture strong.
Not of wreckage, but of us
Who are left: to plumb our loss.

V
But my grouse is with the gross
Of a world that gropes for words
For the lot of us in loss.
What she heaves in tow is gloss:
‘Who are left unscathèd are lords!’
Lisa’s bits I grope to own –
Yet, with sod in hand, I’m thrown.

©ADELEKE “MAINASARA” O’ADEYEMI (27/10/05)

08023920443
Mainasara@gmail.com
PO Box 496 Katsina
Katsina State