WIPE YOUR TEARS Child, let your eyelids gleam Like a thousand suns. Let your smiles radiate Like the stars In the sky at night. The comeliness of your voice Is more graceful Than the nightingale's song. Wipe your tears, my lovely one, There is always A new dawn tomorrow. BETHLEHEM SONGS In the silent and cold nights, When the stars throng In twinkling lights Across the distant brooks, A lone Shepherd's gleeful looks Tell the memory of Bethlehem song And the undying themes In the immortal hymns.
(First appeared in Ovi Magazine and Parousia) SPARROWS Bedraggled, and brow-beaten By the salt waters, Alone in a crumbling shack By the sandbars, Beneath the blanket, a fisherman Shares beads of tears With the droplets of rain. A flawless film of playful children, Tossing in the dune of past years, Flickers in the synopsis Of his eyes. He remembers the field of floss flowers At the other side of the stone debris, And with unleavened tongue Sings knotted epithets of sparrows
(First appeared in Bewildering stories)
Shola Balogun, playwright, poet and writer is from Yoruba South-Western part of Nigeria,West Africa. He was the winner of the First Educare Trust's OLAUDAH EQUIANO POETRY PRIZE(2002)and the FESTIVAL OF PEACE POETRY AWARD(2OO5)organized by the Institute of African Studies,University of Ibadan. He is the author of a collection of Poetry,THE CORNWOMAN OF JURARE & OTHER POEMS(2007). THE WRESTLING OF JACOB, DEATH AND SUICIDE IN SELECTED AFRICAN PLAYS,and,PRAYING DANGEROUSLY:THE CRY OF BLIND BARTIMAEUS