MUSIC OF THE FLUTE (PART iv) By: Chukwudi Okoye

Voice: What is this that I hear from the piper's flute?
Has the town crier gone mad to announce to strangers
The secrets of the ancient rituals?

Elders: The piper is lost in his song,
The town crier to the sounds of the gong,
And strangers, they now know that there is nothing to fear
Besides the whip from the village masquerade.

Voice: Why do birds fly backwards across the sacred hill?
Since when does the kite challenge the hunter's gun
And white hen defecate on the chief priest's roof?

Elders: Since the breaking of the evening kola;
The gods are dead, the gods are dead,
The gods are dead, murdered in their bed.

Voice: But the dead do speak through the Putrefaction of their flesh.

Elders: And the hyenas laugh, the vultures descend, the termites come
To make feast of the dead.

Voice: Is there, is there truly a justifiable cause to pursue the hen
On slippery ground?

Elders: The quest for Power is only for the brave and the violent.
The children of light sit in the moonlight telling tales,
While the children of night seek to redraw the outline of the moon.

Voice: But the moon is a gift for all, and the Heavens are for the gods alone to forge.

Elders: The gods are dead, the gods are dead,
The gods are dead, murdered in their bed

Voice: Who has the courage to awake the Leopard?
Dead or alive, who has the courage to gaze upon the face of death

And live to tell the tale?

Elders: The brave and the violent, and only those can take it by force.

Voice: Bravery with violence may take lives,
But life is never what it appears to be.

Elders: Life is neither black, life is neither white,
Still the gods are dead, the gods are dead,
The gods are dead, murdered in their bed.

Artwork by: Clement Peter

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