Solemnity

to a generation

emerging

I see you stare in the distance —

Perplexed, lost,

shattered. What anarchy has befallen

you? Alas!

what gloom hovers above you? There’s no

need to

morph yourself into airy nothingness just

so to

be noticed. It is an abomination for one to

be the

boy/girl whose identity keeps receding

into

shadows & shame — the fastest way to

drowning

in the winds of this world. Pleasures and parties

will never placate the penury of the land

you inherited.

Unless you learn to plunge your voice

into a song,

your horizons will be barren of harmony.

The already

exhausted radio whispers that roses do

not rise if

they are deprived of the regalia of light.

But all I see

is an empty husk: much idleness and

chaos

swallowing our coasts; this generation

making wreck

of itself. My country is dipped in black,

her eyes pour

with blood. She hurries to the sun to purge

her impurities,

but everything becomes darkness. What

is left of a

generation that awakes to a sight stained by

death? It can

but only have the audacity to dream, to

hope, to wish;

that out of the ashes, a new dawn

emerges.

About the author

Arthur Shedrick Davies is a voice from Monrovia, Liberia. He's a lover of arts and a stalker of literature, and he gathers his poetic spurs from life's beauty and profundity. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Arts Lounge (Issue One, Volume 1), Eboquills, Sleepless In Monrovia (SIM), The Ducor Review, Breaking the Silence: Anthology of Liberian Poetry, journals, magazines, and elsewhere.

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