THE GRAVEYARD - BY OLUSEGUN OMOTOSHO

THE GRAVEYARD
© Olusegun Omotosho

There's a  Graveyard,
Just a Town;
The grasses are overgrown
The trees are dead and brown
 From the look of the dead flora

It's about a mile from joy
The fence is almost gone
It's never going to get mistaken
for good old forest lawn
There's not a stone of granite
But stones of grief

The Town was founded a fertile land
With versatile hands
Shaped of a golden race
Who begot plenteous maize
Enough to feed the birds
Hungry for bread

Blessed with fortune
The resources often
Galvanised by living souls
Not dead soles
Whose existence is like dust
The wind takes on a journey

But,

A graveyard
full of tombs
 Garden of withered roses
Where silence cries

A deserted place, where
Residents returned to the earth
Among other memorials
Who had long abandoned their place of birth

It is a  graveyard
Where cemeteries are inaugurated
Inplace of companies,
Where flowers are laid
Instead of vegetation

A grave land
Where the yards
Are measured 6feet deep
After the collapse of the 6feets and feets

A home for the dead
Where epitaph are like billboards,
An advertisement of the dead
Necessarily placed to speak the dead
Whose body had been registered to the earth

Brown wet clinging clay lies,
Heaped by the side of a black hollow
Waiting for another invited guest
By death
As the bell tolls, mournfully-
Broken headstones speckle

In a graveyard of memories
 I find myself,
Searching for something
For us

Seeing our greatyard like a graveyard
Where tears like rain
Come in season
To wet the dead soil;
 Tombs built
After the erection of bombs

I thought it was a potter's field
for those destitute and prostitute,
But, upon close examination
I have discovered so much more

The town is neglected
There's no body here at rest
from since the town was started
laid in this hallowed nest
No one cares about them

But in this field, the dead will lie
So, they'll sleep soft here forever
And dream of life forever more
In their death 

Shall our Town become A Graveyard?
Far be it!
There are homes for the dead
Let our Town continue to live
As we tender it a garden,
Not render it a graveyard.

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