The Day Chaos Won Again & Other Poems – Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún

There were no “vote rigging” chants;

No angry rants in the middle of the night

Chasing the mirage of a victory filtered out

Of the hands of a nation’s supposed might.

There were no loud tears either, nor horns

Of glee, pussy hats on streets of the capital;

Or gnashing of teeth on screens around town

In dread for the fangs for coming battles.

No new distrust of what was really known

To be the country’s old mercurial heart

If anything, the surprise came from trusting

That time has wrought a newly chastened start.

Death might feel like sleep, an unfeeling breeze

Across the restive eye. How can one tell

What this moment portends, across the pond

Within what seems like a world’s loud knell.

Gloom and the silence of what’s coming

Bears heavy, as promised, on the break of day.

Does it touch me here? I can’t yet tell;

Me, at the Ashmolean, amidst empires of clay.

The Frog on the Boil

2025 America.

Face in the air

Above the throbbing broth,

She wonders when

It’s time to leap out –

Into the other, likely,

Fire.

Tevye in Gaza

“Some are driven away by edicts… others, by silence.”

Grunt and charm do not move

The audience watching

The caravan drawn out of town

Followed by billows of smoke.

Family in Amman and Cairo

Call in with prayer songs across

A barbed wire fence planted

Across decades of dreams.

Neither does tradition

That once marked gathered tribes 

With the milk of our common

Humanity – that long-lost word.

We do not see ourselves yet

In the tragedy that returns

In countless names and creeds rhyming 

With history’s worst recall.

The carts aren’t heading west now

Since the gates are closed; nor east

From where the fires come with glee

To render blind and toothless the world.

Only dust follows, and night terrors;

Bellies starved of life and hope

Gathered around the shores

Awaiting the next mean scene.

Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún is a Nigerian linguist, writer, translator, scholar, cultural activist and film-maker. His work and influence span the fields of education, language technology, literature, journalism, and linguistics.

*Image by Element5 Digital on Unsplash