Hold, hold,
O raging god,
Your anger flowing over,
Like a river overflowing its banks,
We know where we have gone wrong.
Bestriding your altar and shrine,
No longer eager to hold on to your promise,
Yet reluctant to join wholeheartedly in their hallelujahs,
We're swinging forth and back and back and forth,
We barely comprehend their rites
And cannot fully embrace them.
But then, how much longer can we abide under your presence?
When your altar is spilling over with heaps of garbage?
When you no longer accept holocausts offered to you?
When gangrenous carcasses liter your shrine
And the air is foul?
When weeds have eaten up your entrance?
And your priests have joined them too?
Too late.
Their Gloria and belief system drown their sounds
Of the traditional instruments like the iroko and ogele,
Their litanies and ejaculatory prayers outshine
Our incantations, the songs of our land;
Their memorials and solemnities swallow up your festivals.
Too late.
Civilization has eaten up the land,
And your shrine has become a tourist centre;
Unbelievers now poke fingers into your staring eyes
And laugh their heads off.
Too late.
Their church bell is already tolling.
I'll be ban from the communion if caught here.
Accept my last homage,
For already footsteps are approaching;
I hear faint whispers,
Very soon the remains of a once powerful deity
May be rotting in a foreign museum.