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| Prof. Wole Soyinka |
No bed of flowers bloomed for Kudirat
She was not royal, white or glamorous
Not one carnation marked the spot of death.
Though undecreed, a ban on mourning spoke
Louder than cold-eyed guns that spat
Their message of contempt against the world.
Oh, there were noises from the diplomatic world
A protest diskette ran its regulation course – but
She was no media princess, no sibling
Of hagiomanic earls. All too soon it was:
Business as usual. Dark sludge
And lubricant of conscience, oil
Must flow, though hearts atrophy, and tears
Are staunched at source.
Death touches all, both kin and strangers.
The death of one, we know, is one death
One too many. Grief unites, but grief’s
Manipulation thrusts our worlds apart
In more than measurable distances – there are
Tears of cultured pearls, while others drop
As silent stones. Their core of embers
Melts brass casings on the street of death.
She was not royal, white or glamorous
No catch of playboy millionaires.
Her grace was not for media drool, her beauty
We shall leave to nature’s troubadours.
Courage is its own crown, sometimes
Of thorns, always luminous as martyrdom.
Her pedigree was one with Moremi,
Queen Amina, Aung Sung Kyi, with
The Maid of Orleans and all who mother
Pain as offspring, offer blood as others, milk.
She seeks no coronet of hearts, who reigns
Queen of a people’s will.
Oh let us praise the lineage
That turns the hearth to ramparts and,
Self surrendered, dons a mantle that becomes
The rare-born Master of Fate.
* Kudirat Abiola was the wife of the elected Nigerian President M.K.O.
Abiola, who was assassinated by agents of the usurping dictator,
Sanni Abacha, in June 1996, the year before Princess Diana died in a
Motor accident.