Mr. Africa Poetry Lounge!
Lazarus
We know the breathtaking
joy of his sisters when the word
spread: He is risen! But a
man who has lived a full life
will have others to
reckon with beside his
sisters. Certainly that keen-eyed
assistant who has moved up
to his table at the office, for
him resurrection is an awful
embarrassment.... The luckless
people of Ogbaku knew its
terrors that day the twin-headed
evil strode their highway. It
could not have been easy
picking up again the blood-spattered
clubs they had cast away; or to
turn from the battered body
of the barrister lying beside his
battered limousine to finish off
their own man, stirring now suddenly
in wide-eyed resurrection.... How well
they understood, those grim-faced
villagers wielding their crimson
weapons once more, how well
they understood that at the hour
of his rising their kinsman
avenged in murder would turn
away from them in obedience
to other fraternities, would turn indeed
their own accuser and in one
breath obliterate their plea
and justification! So they killed
him a second time that day on the
threshold of a promising resurrection.
Written by Chinua Achebe (1930-2013)
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