By the trails of Dunbar
We all walked, including father
…chains rattling…
…death looming…
White, we walked
hungry and sore
Herons, pure and slender
calling to one another—our slaughter.
Mosquitoes probing their last drink from our flesh
As we walked to the marsh.
Our hearts racing fast,
ready to breathe its last.”

There was a time when children played in the kindness of the sunlight and sang to the coolness of the moonlight.

A time when the soil was as fertile as a young maiden; her sacredness was the yardstick for an unblotted union between nature and mankind.
A time when young men kept at bay the rod of fruition.

A time when old men and women ate in earthen pots with their bare hands and drank from calabashes abandoned to the rain’s blessings. A time when the manhood of a boy was tested by rites and crowned with facial scarifications.

It was indeed a time our world knew no form of ‘civilization’—we were mere craftsmen, farmers or traders; we were like no one else in the world.

It was also a time when our folklores, traditions, myths and beliefs was set to the time of fate to begin to fall apart, gradually.

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