Love Poem: Doom
Judith Utuetu Avatar
Written by: Judith Utuetu

Doom

The hush of the singing nightingales,
the raucous Owl cries,
the sway of the forest in obeisance to the angry wind,
the roaring thunder and blinding lightning,
all usher in the night of doom.

The generation altering night,
that marked the end of a great people
and like death brought the poor and rich to their knees. 

In the dead of the night of the festive day,
fury lashed out her angry arms on all- the innocent and guilty,
plants and animals-                                                                
ripping out souls as they lay sleeping peacefully.

Earth, like a starved Boar, swallowed homes,
but unlike the Passover day showed no favor,
as nature, smirking, ruled by terror.
Consuming all in her ferocious anger.


Farmlands were swept into the waters,
mud houses lay crumbled, 
The great Iroko was strewn all over.        
That night, sounds of woe filled the city,
but with the coming of dawn all went still.
There came silence.

Peace at last; peace of sorrow.
Why? There were no daughters to mourn,
and no sons to fire the gun in salute.
Because none had been spared,
a whole city washed out and swallowed into the earth and seas,
that echoed doom in its silence.