THE ANONYMOUS VOICE

The Anonymous Voice

“I wish I knew,” they say

Empty words for fools today.

I thought I held to virtue true,

Until that hour, that moment came,

When clay was told, “you were ours.”

My once-lively fingers could not shake,

Stilled by nature’s final check.

In this new form, I now regret

The way I was once nurtured

Vice mistaken for virtue,

A hollow life without value.

Even my shadow, my closest friend,

Has fled, for the self he loved lies buried.

Friends, I speak from the “unknown world” where I dwell,

Where even the air molecules

Whisper noise against my soul.

Hard to believe, I know

Yet none of us chose this place.

Perhaps by force, perhaps by fate,

I live in sick apprehension.

When I walked among you,

My vision was clouded,

And that blindness led me here.

This is a noisy realm,

Where thoughts drown in the question:

“Who is next?”

No one cares,

For this place is but an annex of despair.

Now, friends, I tremble

Afraid that I am next.

Before I scream in hell,

I offer you this advice:

Never live to regret,

As I did today.

This day, “the day of neglect,”

When the potter abandons clay

That failed to be molded

Remember, before your shadowless self is crushed:

“As you sow, so shall you reap.”

                                       Okot Emmanuel Okai