Poem-Peril: the name of a nation
Peril: The Name of a Nation
Saidu Bangura. Praia, September 7, 2022.
I see a country still in pain
I feel a nation still in trauma
I hear people screaming
lamenting mortal intolerance
orchestrated by their own
in a democratic dispensation
that abhors differing opinions,
detesting not our lack, not our
misleaders and misgovernments,
not the persistent challenges,
ingredients that caused the flow
of innocent blood of Yester years,
the innocent blood of a people,
the smell that still lingers around,
acts still being executed in our land
to a people not fully recovered from
the tremors of the bitterness of war
– angst, loss, and displacement –
the chaos that gripped a nation
still nursing the wounds of war,
the reign of terror on a deprived
but peaceful and resilient people,
a tolerant and peace-loving people
induced, instigated to hate while
being dispossessed by their leaders –
a painful reminder of our past as
the seeds of division, hate, unrest
misgivings, greed, vituperation
are being sown this September –
after August, the new April that
brings us the fragility of a nation,
the cracks that we need to mend –
what a distasteful and unpleasant
reality of our polity, Politics 101:
the disenfranchisement of suffrage,
the unhealed sores enfranchisement
opens in the “land that we love”, not!
September, the month that announces
a nation in peril, a nation in dire need of
empowerment, not disenfranchisement:
September is our new peril after August!
Dr Saidu Bangura is an Assistant Professor at the University of Cape Verde. He lectures in the English Studies Course, Faculty of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, University of Cape Verde. He holds a BA, English & Linguistics (FBC, USL); PhD in Translation, Communication, and Culture with a specialty in English Linguistics (University of Las Palmas, Canary Islands, Spain).