Scary Moment

(An elegy on the late emir of Kano, Ado Bayero)

Death unveils the covered story
It exposes inner thoughts and emotions.
It demolishes all forms of structures
Death, despised by all, jinns and humans,
Feared by animals under the sea and on the earth.
And in all the universe, by all creatures
In a scary moment, it remains stern,
So recalcitrant being, uncertain and crook.
It shows up the hidden, and the untold,
It reveals the secrets of the living beings
The secrets kept for centuries and beyond.
I have in mind death and its clues,
As in the lines of Thomas Stearns Eliot
" And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Death, the inevitable visitor that sneaks into our world,
That snatches the long treasures- of lives and happiness.
That breaks our internal and external defences
Banked and nurtured in good faith, then comes it
And grab the pride and fantasies of a people,
Throwing them into the bloody ocean of dejection
Death spares no king or don, but takes them off
It spares no wealthy or poor, learned or illiterate
Spares no old or young, crawling or bubbling;
Cooing or wooing; drooping with ailment,
Or even safe, jubilating hopefully on the Planet,
Will come as it follows the eternal command,
Spares not even an infant, nor pity the mother
It cruises into mother's womb, and makes it stillborn.
It doesn't chose its victim, niether favours favour.
Victimises all hemispheres in all that breath.
The departure of the emir, teaches all life lessons,
But only to the people who think- think like a man,
It teaches me to forsake the the material world
Including all its fabulous ornaments,
It teaches me to fear Lord more and more,
It makes me look straight up to the firmament,
And recall the exaltation and achitecture of God,
It makes me recall the dead, lying in cemetery.
Burried therein with only shrouds and cottons,
It makes me recall the abundance they left behind,
But the bounties can't emancipate the deceased or help.
Recalling all the graces the deceased once had,
And all the trophies and honours and regards,
Are for nothing but tittles of the past.
When I recall the influence and self-esteem
The offsprings left living, and the palaces,
The wealth, knowledge and luxuries,
The and- and- and- and the and...
I then forsake this uncertain world,
Temporary and confusing one...
And bear in mind, then, a scholar's lines:
" Verily Allah has intelligent servants,
They forsake the world and feared fitnah,
They observed in it and then knew
That it is not the place for living.
They then take it as a lake,
And make good deeds in it the boat."
May Almighty forgive the deceased king,
And make the Garden his better palace.
May He not try us after him and more.



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