Solemnity
Photo: Wolfgang Hasselmann
to a generation
emerging
I see you stare in the distance —
Perplexed, lost,
shattered. What anarchy has befallen
you? Alas!
what gloom hovers above you? There’s no
need to
morph yourself into airy nothingness just
so to
be noticed. It is an abomination for one to
be the
boy/girl whose identity keeps receding
into
shadows & shame — the fastest way to
drowning
in the winds of this world. Pleasures and parties
will never placate the penury of the land
you inherited.
Unless you learn to plunge your voice
into a song,
your horizons will be barren of harmony.
The already
exhausted radio whispers that roses do
not rise if
they are deprived of the regalia of light.
But all I see
is an empty husk: much idleness and
chaos
swallowing our coasts; this generation
making wreck
of itself. My country is dipped in black,
her eyes pour
with blood. She hurries to the sun to purge
her impurities,
but everything becomes darkness. What
is left of a
generation that awakes to a sight stained by
death? It can
but only have the audacity to dream, to
hope, to wish;
that out of the ashes, a new dawn
emerges.
About the author
Arthur Shedrick Davies is a voice from Monrovia, Liberia. He's a lover of arts and a stalker of literature, and he gathers his poetic spurs from life's beauty and profundity. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Arts Lounge (Issue One, Volume 1), Eboquills, Sleepless In Monrovia (SIM), The Ducor Review, Breaking the Silence: Anthology of Liberian Poetry, journals, magazines, and elsewhere.
