When the Lies are Gone

An intense and powerful protest poem by Olaitan that explores ‘living shadows of truths’ and ‘pleasant tortures’, in Different Truths.

The living shadows 
Of truths visit
The tombs
Of our minds,
And the pristine silence 
Of their battered, starved
And naked voices echo
The joyful sorrow
Of truth
To the deadness
Of our living ears…

With vivid bluntness
And loud silence,
They chant 
To the sleeping wakefulness                           
Of our minds…

But…

The shackled freedoms
Of our ignorance encapsulate
The wisdom
Of our folly…

Thus,
The greyness
Of our hair has become
The announcer
Of our zaniness…

‘Bring the palm wine
And let the waists come 
To us.
We will tell
The truth when 
The lies are gone.’
Our elders say amidst shameful laughter.

Beneath pleasant tortures
Of life lie
The massacred skeletons
Of the truths we clothed.

And…

Before our eyes lie
The boom-boom
Of the guns ready 
To fire our doom…

If…

We mute the volume 
Of the truths in our minds…
And shy away from
The truths before us…

Picture design Anumita Roy