Living in the 21st Century (13): The Gliding Bird

 Louis Mbua Egbe

Men and women a brilliant idea they thought

That in nuclear power they may imitate

As the kind of process in the stars sought

To produce a power so as to proliferate

The earth with her people spoiling for a fight:

Two wars the earth was itself fully eclipsed

One with horses, a million men with might

Two with aircrafts, with new weapons strapped

Like a spear on ostrich egg not given of flight

With a key and lock visible, to be released:

Packed onto Enola Gay the locust’s secret

But a weapon so deadly to humans exposed

To its nuclear fission and white superheat

That burns through all skin and flesh destroyed!

And then arose the played generation new

In the art of enlightenment that ushers

On earth mobile to all gifted who knew

Thus the danger the nuclear tech usurper

Hawks encourage powers standing on pews,

High Priests of heartless schemes and pushers

Of war in the universe for humans slew

But next an event so strange; a brigadier

Of people young and dynamic: anti-nucleus

Artifice, anti-one stand up protester

Against receding powers -that-be who flew

New locust falling from the skies not manner

But the new world knows not still the object flows,

Only a peaceful bird the gliding flyer!