The Gardener's Cry

THE GARDENER'S CRY

So chargeless a spirit she was of old.
She toiled in the frosty winter morn,
to the hot summer night's fall.
Great admiration she earned from all;
those under the hot sun and the cold Caucasus.
The clouds,
She heavied to rain down
upon the works of her do.
She was the wind
that hovered the face of the crystal waters,
and diffused the sweet fragrance
from her flowers across the universe.
She was honourable
and uncoloured like breath.
Like a mistress, her king,
her heart, to all she gave.

One nocturnal hour,
as she dozed in the night's cool,
crept in the dim-witted wandering vagabond tagged corruption,
and bound her with his strings of deception.
A corruptive manure he applied to the root of her flowers.
Flowers,
before of colours uniform,
now,
strange colours they formed.
The lily-white was pollinated by the icky-petalled.
The rogue flower now co-oped corruption in the gardener's chambers.
His comrades came in through her broken fence unchecked.
Ebola came to take a peek,
and a thousand lilies with him took.
Boko Haram and his brother ISIS,
in her garden they played chess.
At cockcrow her lilies now wither and fall,
from life's harming heaviness.

Like salt lose its taste
to the tramp of mortal foot,
so, green an ocean of honey before,
baked and barren a land of scorpions today.
Once she made a garden of haven for all class.
Today, in her name they prey on the mass.
Her glutinous child,
Himself he made an old guard.
In his ivory tower he sits buried
in thick clouds of smoke from his golden pipe,
while the hot eye of the heavens
burn on the hairless heads of the peons.
He orchestrates the leveling of infrastructure on iced bodies,
as fires cease fire across horizons.

When, will the wandering vagabond loose his powerful grip,
on the gardener to his garden tend?
When, will this temporary permanent dark day expire,
to allow her white lilies see the open and close of heaven's bright eye?
This is never a day possibly impossible.
A day of gardens
filled with the sweet smell of frankincense and myrrh dawn.
All lost is doubly redoubled on this day,
as the last taste of sweets
is sweetest last.

Author: Samuel Kwesi Minlah

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