Let Us Pray for Our Death: Poem by Ohikhuare Isuku

My country-people,
Let the wind taste your tears
And lick your cheeks dry;
You cried a basin full
While the night lumbered - 
It won't halt the honourable thieves,
I tell you!

Now that dawn is here,
Let us pray for our death 
Sitting around the burning logs
And also when the sun honours the sky,
Less another night comes
And our eyes - strained to numbness.

When the spell of death
Shall hear our supplication and visit soon,
We won't die silently on our bedsteads
Nor in our secret nooks where no eye shall glare,
Instead, we'll file into the streets,
Secretariat, holy grounds, markets
Like black ants in procession  -
We'll seek eternal repose in these places
Where the sun will undulate in pity
And take vengeance for us.

So come my country-people,
Don't squeeze too much tears
Out of those eyes,
Else they vanish
Before your everlasting travel;
Come let's pray in solitude;
Come let us pray for our death -
A death no one has ever died,
A death only for the brave.