The road came to a halt
And the bus turned away and fled
As if from an imminent doom.

In the thorn bushes
Pinpricks of a thousand eyes
Asked me where I had been
All these hard years.

In the fading light
I saw ghostly stumps
Marking the remains
Of the cattle pen,
And across the yard, stilted,
Like a kwashiorkor child
The empty grain hut.

Then
Like looking into the muzzle of a gun
Which had been trained on me
All the time,
The hateful stare of the rooster
Piercing me through a chink
In the coop,
The empty perches telling
Of the rape of his harem:
Now he hated trespassers
Like me.

From the hut came little voices
Like chicks snuggling
Under their mother’s wing
When the light is dark
When the night thunders war
When the bleak air reeks
Of gunfire.