To Live In A Land Of Liberty

I want to live in a land of true and trusted liberty
Where governance grants and not dampen gaiety
I want to live loved and free from constant control
Where my talents drive my initiatives without patrol

I want to awake many a sunshine bathed morning
Cheerful in my freedom without a face of mourning
Trusting in country and Lord without fear of autocracy
I want to feel and savour the soothing waves of democracy

Yet Lord Oh Lord, as each dawn greets my hazy horizon
As each creepy dusk visits, my waning spirits become frozen
For I feel knots of ulcerous apprehension deep within me
Forces of stealth that frame my being and won't let me be

I look at the land sprawling in latitudes of simplistic laxity
I see years gone by when these landscapes were in sanctity
My dreams are nightmares, my hopes but series of premonition
As I sense that the daily chips on my fortitude spell demolition

I want to wake up tomorrow with great memories of yesterday
To dance without sequence in the luxury of a certain everyday
An everyday that doesn't have a predetermined programme for me
Just wishing for days when my life is mine and I can let it so be

These seemingly unwarranted nagging fears of a fast fading era
Drive my thoughts to conclusions of an impending era of error
A conviction that we might have chosen a destinty fraught with peril
That hell once afar may be speeding on us with the might of the devil

When rains fall mercifully wetting the parched sands of my native land
When thunder roars and lightning claps and flashes, brandishing its wand
When the storms abate and sunshine drives off the hovering grey clouds
I recall how nature once spoke hopes thus and not today's lingering doubts

There is an unused sword that is sharp and shining with unspoken menace
I see false smiles on faces that daily discern that the sword shall soon deface
I perceive sounds of thunders that may be harbingers of rains of bullets
I sense doom dawning on the dusk of a troubled sunset over dry sandy rivulets

Yet a glimmer of hope lights the tunnel of my tormented thoughts of despair
In past times these foreboding torrents of terror within me underwent repair
So I pray with frugal bravado and guarded hope for a miraculous reversal
That our beliefs, hopes and prayers shall not be mere presentiments of betrayal.

By Andrew Onalenna Sesinyi
[This poem is as dateless as it is timeless]