KWENU! Our culture, our future

**Amaka At 75*±**

Oseloka Obaze

selonnes@aol.com

Wednesday, 20 February 2008

Dame Amaka

Fame becomes you

Fulfilled you must be

At the youthful age of 75

And having nurtured many a children

Now elite men of substance

But how fair thee?

Are you well and catered for?

Or like old Siberia, abandoned

Well known; but no visitors

Is your emblem still there?

That crest embossed with BDS

The white-blue flag so pristine

Or is it all memories and

Infinite stories of Three Cheers

As your products

Live on past glory

Arise Amaka, Arise

Walk in Majesty

From 75 to 100

Meanwhile, Dame

May your fame

Last Forever.

Sun Set at Noon*

© Oseloka Obaze

Time as a promise was a given

And future’s prospect great

Normalcy embraced and beckoned

Ethereal concerns the lone distraction.

But nature and serendipity,

Decreed a severe reverse,

For our mortality must be affirmed

When life is snuffed out

Unforeseen, unheralded and infelicitous

Alas, the Sun has set at noon.

The pain so intense, so interminable

Such clangor, regardless of cause

Death fears none, any turf or abode

Indiscreetly death abrades life

Death displeases, torments, stealthily,

Just to please insatiable mother earth,

Stand tall and wrestle gluttony mother earth,

Though our home be it.

Onwuteaka – Death be gone!

* Both poems were initially published in The Amaka Gazette, Vol. 8, No.1 (Journal of CKC-AAA, Inc.) in July 2007 and are republished with permission.

± Poem is a tribute to Christ the King College Onitsha (Amaka), which celebrates its Diamond Jubilee (1933-2008) this year..

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Mr. Oseloka Obaze, an aspiring writer, is a founding member of the Kwenu.com Book Review Forum, which is dedicated to the promotion of books with Igbo and Afrocentric themes. He is also a supporting Member of the African Writers Endowment (AWE). From 1999 to 2005, he served on the editorial board of INYEAKA, the journal of Songhai Charities, Inc., a New Jersey community-based charity founded and run by Nigerians based in New York Tri-state area in the United States, first as its founding Publisher and later as the Editor-At-Large. He is also on the editorial board of The Amaka Gazette, the journal of the Christ the King College, Onitsha Alumni Association in America. His collection of poems, “Regarscent Past: A Collection of Poems” was second among the top three finalists in the poetry category in the African Writers Endowment Publishing Grant Program for 2004. His novel, “Happy Eulogy” will be published soon. He reviews books and arts strictly as a hobby.