Hanging day. <br />A hollow earth <br />Echoes footsteps of the grave procession. <br />Walls in sunspots <br />Lean to shadow of the shortening morn. <br /> <br />Behind an eyepatch lushly blue. <br />The wall of prayer has taken refuge <br />In a piece of blindness, closed. <br />Its grey recessive deeps. <br />Fretful limbs. <br /> <br />And glances that would sometimes <br />Conjure up a drawbridge <br />Raised but never lowered between <br />Their gathering and my sway <br /> <br />Withdraw, as all the living world <br />Belie their absence in a feel of eyes <br />Barred and secret in the empty home. <br />Of shuttered windows, i know the heart. <br />Has journeyed far from present. <br /> <br />Tread. Drop. Dread Drop. Dead. <br /> <br />What may I tell you? What reveal? <br />I who before them peered unseen <br />Who stood one-legged on the untrodden <br />Verge- lest I should not return. <br /> <br />That I received them? That I wheeled above and flew beneath them. <br />And brought him on his way. <br />And came to mine, even to the edge <br />Of the unspeakable encirclement? <br />What may I tell you of the five <br />Bell-ringers on the ropes to chimes. <br />Of silence? <br />What tell you of rigours of the law? <br />From watchtowers on stunned walls. <br />Raised to stay a siege of darkness <br />What whisper to their football thunders. <br />Vanishing to shrouds of sunlight? <br /> <br />Let not man speak of justice, guilt <br />Far away, blood-stained in their <br />Tens of thousands, hands that damned. <br />These wretches to the pit triumph <br />But here, alone the solitary deed.<br /><br />Wole Soyinka<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/procession-i-hanging-day/
