Remembering Black Wednesday, 30 Years After the Great Anti-SAP Revolt

for
all who fell on Black Wednesday, 30 years back
all who lived through it and came to our conclusions
all who have trudged on, at different times, in our vehicle of its aftermath
all who seek, fight, and keep forging on still, even when the skies are dark
all Mayists, Marxists and any who seek the Nigerian revolution that keep hope and struggle alive
*****************************************************************************


The heat and passion crushed
In that hour, the zeal and heroic
Confrontation, snuffed for a while
By bullets and bayonets

....did outlive the deaths and imprisonments:

From Black Wednesday, would a movement
Be born. A critique of critiques and which thus
Did and still must critique itself. The manure compost
Wrought by fascist thugs, does from flutter the flower, we are

Stirrings legacies never die, when they stir would-be stirrers

It seems so long a journey since and yet so near in time
So much distances covered but so few the places of arrival
The brotherhood of steel though, one sees as stronger than
That of blood. The more so when molten steel flows from the furnace

Of ideas, solidarity, sincerity, theory...and a ceaseless, restless quest

Let a thousand flowers bloom as they would, and let ten thousand ideas
Contend. The compost of Black Wednesday, will forever call onto the earth of
All flowers that really do bloom, as only the deep calls to the deep. The flower
Of May, beyond the Mayflower, we hold aloft

.......for unity, for liberation, now and for as long as in this war, we are ensconced


We shall be heroes comrades, or we shall be martyrs
Our cry still remains, like Fidel and Che before us. Like Cabral
And Adaka after them: 'Liberation or Death'

We will stand fighting and if need be; die for what we live for
We shall...for Mayists we are
PostScript:
This poem titled Forging on Still was written to mark 20 years of the Great Anti-SAP Revolt, in 2009 - and remains as apt today, to mark the 30th year of that momentous flash of a revolutionary moment that defined the politics I have since held on to, and will, till my last breath.

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