TOO MUCH TO PAY

“We build the field we grazed
…before moving on to build us”
Were the words which were the chewing sticks of elders
So we lived like robots
…and grew indebted
We pay our debts
…and are blindsided by time
…which wheel us to old age and buy us rage
…before our awakening
Just because we have too much to pay

II
Mother’s joint balms
Father’s eye medicines
Siblings’ fees
Uncles’ farm implements
Cousins’ capital
Auntie’s operation
The list is like an endless dark pit
As hardworkers turn mines
…dug and shoveled
…blasted and looted
Until our breakdown
Just because we have too much to pay

III
Why are children pension of parents?
Why is life too expensive at our end?
What is the contract signed by children
…before their births?
Why does it bind and make us debtors
…with too much to pay?

IV
It is a worry –
That sadness which makes hearts sorry
After losing all of youth’s glory
Just to write a story with bodies
…never to be told in plain words
…that we had too much to pay

V
So life starts just before the dawn of its ending
Wrinkles singing hymns of lateness
Weak joints playing haunting xylophones of pain
As our suns go down in regrets
Why can’t we build us after our grazing
Before looking back to plough other fields?
Why saddle us with too much to pay
…for lives we never begged to have?
Depression is the expression
…even in this compression
Haunting songs
Daunting gongs
Taunting longings
…these are bought sentiments for our indebtedness
Amoafowaa Sefa Cecilia © July 29, 2020