As if you were never here before.
As if you have forgotten that you were what we are, but you, self-betrayed.
Raise walls of deafness to deflect pleas of innocence.
As if the world you taught has lost its axis, ceased to spin.
As if you have forgotten when you watched entranced.
The dance of leaves on stream currents.
Your image wobbling in their depths.
As if you never chased or raced to leave your shadow.
As if you never waved to shapes or folklore monsters, heroes, morphing in the clouds.
As if you ever peddled differences among your kind at that first,
Guileless site, till knowing winks and whispers,
Otherness words- pauper, pagan, dirty, low - born - banned
Partners - in - prank of yesterday
From closeness - henceforth friends from outer space, non human.
As if your arms, drug empowered or orphaned,
Were ever forced to cradle ponderous arms,
Senses fused to death commands,
As if your shoulders caved under abnormal loads
To earn a pittance and a night of slums
Where the sun is total stranger
As if a child is not the unlisted heritage of time,
The one perennial season.
As if my presence fails to image what you were,
Mirrored in trustful faces - like the world
Itself a trusting planet, an eternity that spins in human hands
As if,
As if childhood were out of fashion
As if,
As if.
Transcribed from a video where Wole Soyinka read a poem dedicated to the children to commemorate the 30th convention on the rights of the child.
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