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).