By Farook Abdul-Karim Sesay, a Sierra Leonean Writer. Poet. Legal advisor. Political commentator
Gnarled and calloused hands. Voices coarsed. Yet haunting. Griots ignored the punishing heat. And, listened to the voices in their souls. Sacred!/ Weeping willows swayed. Not to dry season breeze. Only succumbed to words etched on the canvases of griots. Who sang songs of the spiritual dead/
Though unborn, my soul is tormented. Suffused with the words. Haunting.Taunting. And my unformed heart bleeds/ as griots and ghosts of my unborn world sang and danced. Not to celebrate. But to exorcise the shamed transgressions. As the past drags the present into the future. Where iniquity breeds/
The drums of my ancestors moaned. Dark groans. Soulful. Yet soulless. Waking the conscience. That witnessed the transgressors and their iniquities. Those ugly taboos. Pervading the future like dust from a Malian desert dune/my unborn soul weeps. Screams! At the injustice of my forefathers. Not knowing our present burden is their unfortunate fortune/
My unborn heart bleeds. A soul conceived in wedlock. By a celibate forced to rape my inconsiderate existence. Listening to griots sing. Desolate and discordant Dirges. Instead of drums rolling out warriors’ exploits. My unformed soul dances against its will to its beautiful pain/ not with pride. But with serrated shame. As that pain is splattered against my soul’s window pane/
Blood-stained nuggets of shameful acts. A kaleidoscope of incongruous strobes. Like a madman’s treasured shards/ on a black canopy awashed with future tarot cards/
Foretelling wasted hopes and dead dreams. Like they are crumpled memories of long forgotten landscapes/ once lush now barren. Bearing fruit. Forbidden. Cursed by my ancestral gods. That tastes like taboo grapes/
