Lost Barricade

Comrade,
Do you remember the days of fire?
When our arms were ladders,
our voices volcanoes,
and our feet
drums that rattled
the gluttons’ gates?

You were the loudest lion
in the pride,
the one who roared
until generals shivered.

I saw your boots, Comrade,
mud-matted, memory-marked,
marching like thunder
through the streets.

I saw your fists,
scarred scriptures of struggle,
teaching us courage without speaking.

But sorry, Comrade,
what lured you from the barricade?
Was it hunger, gnawing the belly?
Or honey dripping from power’s palm?
Did the night break your bones?
Or did the morning sun blind your eyes?

They say, “the child who washes his hands
will dine with elders.”
But Comrade, whose table have you washed for?
And what feast have you found
that makes you forget
the kitchen of the people?

Now I hear your tongue,
once a flint that sparked fire,
now buttered, broken, bent,
praising the very bastards
We once spat upon.
You sit in flesh-cushioned chairs,
trading chants for contracts,
barricades for briefcases.

Comrade,
Is this the harvest of our sweat?

I return to the street,
to the scarred benches,
the graffiti bleeding on walls,
The tear-gas ghosts still crawling in gutters.
I stand where we once stood,
and it feels like a graveyard
where the tombstones have no names.

And I ask you, Comrade:
What song shall I raise here now?
I remember Ralph Chaplin’s.
Shall I call your name in the chorus?
But I fear it will crack in my throat
like a calabash dropped on a stone.

We buried you, Comrade.
We bury our bond.
We buried you without shovels,
with tears that rolled and readjusted.
We lowered you in the ground of memory,
while you walk still above.

Well…
The barricade still stands,
even though it leans, hollow,
like a drum with its skin torn,

and I, your brother,
remain at its foot,
hands trembling,
heart heavy,
asking the wind:
How do I mourn a corpse
Still breathing?

Majekodunmi 0. Ebhohon is a poet, media practitioner, and playwright. Author of the Black revolutionary play ‘The Great Delusion’, he writes from Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria
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