Our land is a virgin, a maiden
Adorned with black gold of the rainforest
Surrounded by the wild of the coast
Shared in peace by her children
From the Cross stretching to the West.
That was then…
The maiden weeps, the maiden bewails
Her fecund laps stretched in disregard
And her hymen broken, her hymen
That conceals the differing ovaries within.
Now her soil is stained with blood
And her innocence sucked.
Her ovaries struggle within
To control the slimy fecund oily soil,
I mean of what is left,
While the imperialist jabbing heightens.
She’s pregnant…
Our soil is oily, our oily soil
Soiled by the oil of bourgeois machinery
Imperiling our land with imperialist outflow,
Milking adversely our bio-diversity.
Washed away are the resting abodes
Of our fore-gone sires through
The bird-foot region to the Atlantic,
Leaving their manhood bare-buttock.
And now we struggle within
Increasing her pains, spilling blood
And intensifying the imperialists imperiling
Of her innocence, our fecundity.
She writhes in pain…
Burnt within,
Suffering from the baton of abuse
From without,
Midwives are come to the rescue.
But will the confinement yield
And she be delivered of live births
That shall mock the imperialists
And restore her sanity, her resilience?
Or will her births be born still
Saying her gestation is not done?
charlesbassey's fragments 