Poets’ corner: No refuge

Problems make man to desert the home

Painfully leaving his woman behind

Some-times the reverse painlessly reign

Women in their freedom also migrate

Away from the bombs and drones of life

From pangs of hunger and claws of poverty

And agonies of marriage under terror of man

 

Man makes money to fuel the governments

They both make man a choice-less migrant

Ruefully fleeing away from dignity at home

Be it in the north, west or the all of Africa

Migrants dare cross the euro-tunnel to Europe

In swashbuckling faith for heaven at destine

The utopian Paradise in which money can flow

And the riches can flow like the Nile waters

Into the house of a refuge the black immigrant

Faith so punctured with bitter truth of the moment

For all gods of poverty will follow you to Europe

They will cross the tunnels with spiritual mighty

They stow away after you in an art of the imp

Sleuthing you to Europe with a gift of shame

Giving you and I nothing but a dystopian text

For us to read in arms and sing Ode to migrants

We better stay back and fight poverty as one

We better join hands to fight misrule as one. Out of our motherlands the gift from God

 

- By Alexander Khamala Opicho

Lodwar