Kindly, I Will Not Take That Award!

Sir,

I am a small man of small means

If there was a stampede of gazelles in a park,

I will be the grass to be trodden upon.

 

Speaking of grass, sir,

They too can whisper a song,

A tune which the trumpet of the elephant can’t drown

Most times they wither, dry and die

But, almost certainly, with slight drizzles,

They resurrect, emboldened with a new vigour

 

I have lived in this savannah 40 years now

There was a time a fire burnt everything here

For almost a year, the smoldering smoke never left my nostrils

The animals we lived with lay in the fields, burnt to death

Never had a horror visited me as it did then

 

To appease my scorched conscience

One day I walked in the savannah and begun watering it

Death gripped the soil, the air was choked,

Birds moaned above, even the boisterous wind

Gazed forlon— the savannah was a graveyard

 

Day by day, we grew in number,

To restore life where death had stepped

Though we were hunters, we ate akoretee leaves

We passed an edict to protect the savannah

For we realized that the savannah was our existence

 

So, dear Sir,

Though you mean well, I hesitate to take up your award

When the wind blows in the savannah, it does it of its own accord

I don’t own the spring in a lion’s run, I have no clue to hyena’s frolics

Even the vulture’s swoop—trust me—I can’t glide that much

In the darkness, I might have a hint, but savannah’s mysteries I can’t fathom

There are many who did well than me, never for a moment moved for awards,

They lived in obscurity and greatness, in alignment with the savannah

To reward me is to spit on their graves, to honour me is a travesty!

 

Sir, if you be moved,

I would rather you tell your people that

It is not fair game when they talk so much of their privacy

Yet to the animals they pry with cameras and gleefully (with a straight face you might say)

 

Distract animals mating.

With human beings like that, who needs enemies?