Sq unleashed
- 1. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow 1 MARCH 23, 2012 A POEM BY BURI WADDESSO
- 2. Genesis 2 “Who are you?” I asked Him who dashed in and out, in the thick of night Into my soul uninvited; day in, day out Turning it into a riot Who are you? That comes and goes at a toss Creating chaos, a mountain of mess Leaving me confused, in the cross path Elated on onset, but despaired in the aftermath Please do tell me, I’m at a total loss Like a mirage you burst, then in a blink vanished, unidentified Why hide in a flask, shrouding in a cloudy mask? As if afraid of the questions that I ask or with life’s secrets you bask, waiting for my quiz, to bring you to task? Are you an empty wanderer? A distraught fortune teller Bereft of a believer, or a dreamer, looking for a bearer A harbinger of horror, or a life-force, its mirror? Why drop in and out? As if to an abandoned plot Unsolicited, unsought Be forever gone, or stay tight, even if for tonight Tell me who are you in earnest? Do you have a past, a present, or insight on what, comes next? Tonight the figure refuses to retire, adorned with a Red, Green, and Golden attire With the doors to my depth ajar, I listen transfixed, without tire I am Kush’s mighty sire, from times far Wallabu’s offspring, the spirit that flew off on a wing, to save my gene, from receding, into oblivion This is a story of my being To my folks you bring, leaving out not a thing Be my messenger To the youth in particular, be my cipher
- 3. Yesterday 3 Once I fathered loving sons, and daughters A race of equals Unlike their neighbors Cuddled in the palm of Kings, Queens, and Sultans Os, rejoiced in liberty, free subjects of just laws Made by themselves, through wise heads, huddled under shades, of sycamore trees The choicest firstborn males, Qallus, kept calendars, guarded the peace With no arms, or charms Just plain old moral force Should injustice rear its head, in its midst or around While warriors stood guard, and judges debated Out rushed in band The womenfolk, Siinqe at hand A tyrant’s head to demand And get, at day’s end Yesterday was 1612 , AD When my progeny’s power extended To horizon’s end What a pride to behold, quite a story to be told! Awash with overconfidence, to fate’s portents oblivious As the guns gathered, spewing a storm of smoke, and cannons thundered Allas, O awaited unprepared, on its raw strengths alone it banked Little aware that his horse and spear were no longer unmatched
- 4. Today 4 Qallu’s luster, the stature is all but gone The pillars shaken, the roofing caved-in, emptied of meaning, from without and within undone Siinqe—that mighty smotherer of wrongs—has fallen As if to stand never erect again Its beauty for good taken Trashed Trampled upon as the proverbial serpent By the learned, and the ignorant And a tyrant to boot Indifferent deities to entreat Gadaa as myth cast, reduced to a bust, Qaallu a force spent, as Siinqe collected dust With injustice all around to reap, only a few stir to gain a grip Absent-minded, unsure whether to laugh, weep, or skip Resigned on life, sacred holy books to flip, only paradise to hope Yet with faith so skin deep Intolerance to make up O, a caged soul wails Sapped to unshackle the chains, break the walls, that divides Its moral universe Can it survive in perfect tatters? As it bickers Over trivia and “isms” Nihilism engulfs, uncontested falsehood triumphs Its new public squares , of cyber Odaa cafes, dogged by pseudo prophets, idly vomited spites Offered glib answers, to lasting questions What a difference, 400 years, makes
- 5. Tomorrow 5 The strife that never halts, stops, The youth, its backs to illusions, On O’s worldview it firmly settles Shuns, nostalgia for a past, that never returns, Awakened by the rays of a rising sun that beckons Timeless old wisdoms, of its forefathers By the horns it assumes Its vision, with reason, it adorns Not in vain, a riled world awaits For the day that never comes, finally arrives Siinqee-Qaallu conjoined at the rims, wed in a bliss Shorn of dogma and mysteries Resplendent with all its diversities, religious, political or otherwise Reincarnated Gadaa emerges, shaking off the tear and wear of times, Not a Phoenix, a living organism that grows Prospers, as a universal impulse, for all lovers, of freedoms, and impartial rules An ideal of morality, grounded in human dignity Imbued with rationality No mere consumer of modernity Vowing to preserve mother earth to eternity Rings its bells of justice in perpetuity Its calls to humanity, reverberate across the width of land and high seas To shred falsehood into bits, the meek O summons, its elephant strengths Its giant green self it stamps, on all that runs, walks, and flies or governs Lest no one goes amiss, peace-tolerance, all in abundance, free at last, O dances, Its voices, in coherence, rises to starry heavens, which awestruck, listens!