STREAMS OF OUR FOREFATHERS


STREAM OF OUR FOREFATHERS.

Your deep bosom has been laid bare
With it, the pride and price of our culture and tradition
The machine that worked on your body lie still
Plunging into the deep forests of our land
Mowing and laying them bare for sports and games


Our young learn not how to hold the hoe
Nor know where or how to bend in tilling
Our young girls learn not how to grind at the stones 
Nor how to cook at the hearth
Getting plucked in their buds before they’re ripe

The bulldozer came 
They heaped red earth on your waste
While you still breathed 
Preferring “their dam” they buried you alive
But where Is their dam?

Let’s swim together with Fulani cattle
Whose paths plunged through our buried hearts?
Through our treasured tickets
Making deserts of them…. The stench of their dung
Chasing our wild treasure to a wilder wild

Right here where I stand now
 Was your very heart…….stream of our forefathers?
The depth no one dared to swim
Where do I meet my ancestors?
Since their abode hare lay waste?
And from their tranquil shades they have been chased
I brought them chicks with cooked yam
beniseeds, Kola and palm oil for sacrifice

When our men bring new yams from the farm
Where do they bath?
Where do they drink?
Your soothing water no longer flow, we’re done for!
For your greed, sellers of land and conscience for 
Pieces of silver

Where are the nightingales that sing our praise?
When we pass this place?
Where are the monkeys?
The black snakes our ancestors send to us,
Where the wild fruits, our healing herbs?


Now I will wail to the town and say it out loud
To those who ask where our cherished traditions have gone,
Why our values have disappeared
Why our masquerades no longer dance the dance of old
I’ll call them to come and see what a mess of you have been made.
Ooh stream of our forefathers…..
          Igbetua Igbetua LordGideon O.              Igbetua 

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