When Sierra Leone was a Lion

By Elvis Gbanabom Hallowell.

WHEN SIERRA LEONE WAS A LION

a pity not only for me but for Sierra Leone —Gloria Newman-Smart

Before now, the rainmaid brought the rain
and the sunservant too brought the rain
Before now, the country always wiped a brow
and the ocean always drank some more

The choral throat of this mammal has gone dry,
sand-dune desert of mind dragging a famished ego
between equal clock-time,
kith and kin, oasis of the broken.
A birth of ocean dances-
no need, rain, no need to palter
cloudward, O water of air
running the bottom of the sky,
no mane, no name.

When two jaws can no longer whiten the molars,
we say the tongue has lost its venom,
and then the gum suffers a cowardly lick.
Wisdom is missing from this mouth,
a yawn slips in with a breath-
germ of drawl,
germ, octave of octave,
piano knock notes:
The sing don-done for good
the stone go sing we morning hope
the land go cry again.
The sky knocks down a dove
and the country picks up a vulture

Monarch of the forest
Freetown is horrible upon your brow
left on this single path
to your heart; and this love affair
your apocryphal baptism mirrors itself back to back.
It was once said that without the day and the night
dressing you, you were not a country but a thought.
How many rocks must a lion pile upon one another
before he is made king of the jungle?

This is not the Sierra Leone I knew,
a giant with too many sores to lick.
A far cry from the urgent doxology
hymnus angelicus, the temple of the lion has fallen in.
Today a daughter has died in the new Excelsis
after the rogue politicians sacrificed her to its Babel
When Gloria Newman-smart died, Paul Kamara turned one year
in a womb dead inside another dead and a bigger womb.
Our days are full of mourning in a morning stuck inside
a father who was once a lion on a determined mountain.

Necrology of the dead, I shout you, O Harry Yansaneh
the pain of the helpless is heavy upon the trinity of the quick
and the dead, upon you Harry, Gloria, and upon Paul who awaits
the cup with a stubborn resolve.
Therefore I look also elsewhere
in the mouth of this tired cemetery eating this cavalcade of country!