A Time to Rebuild, by Ikeogu Oke

Posted on September 17, 2019

The brisk clock of a nation tolls,

Ringing in a time to rebuild;

It rouses its people with its sound that rolls;

and bids them, “Arise?” for it’s sure they would.

“Arise, Nigerians, arise from your slumber!

Learn to build on the strength of your number!

Your vast land ever burgeoning with life!

Arise and crush the odds that bring you strife!

“Arise, Nigerians, arise and unite;

Expel this gloom that turns your day to night!”

Says the bustling clock that rings in this new dawn,

That rings in a fresh and rosy sun.

“How can we not be great if we free our minds of hate?

How can we not be great if we learn to rule our fate?

How can we not be great if we choose to love our land?

And make our plans and have them work as planned?

“The scribe of history reckons

What we might do

With this chance that beckons

On me and you.

“Would we let this new dawn

And its summons burn away,

Or embrace its warm sun

And its rays of a new day?

“Would we let it slip,

Slip away again,

As we stay asleep,

Unmindful of our pain?

“Or would we heed the summons

Of your clock that bids us rise

The Halcyone Literary Review

Volume 2 * Fall/Winter 2018

Ikeogu Oke is the winner of the 2017 Nigeria Prize for Literature, awarded for The Heresiad, his book-length, musical and dramatizable epic poem. His first published poem, Circulating Good, was written at age 19 and published in 1988 by Unity Magazine. Since then his poems and other writings have been published in Unity Magazine and variosu other outlets on both sides of the Atlantic, Europe and Asia. Oke graduated with a BA in English and Literary Studies from the University of Calabar and an MA in Literature from the Univeristy of Nigeria, Nsukka. He is also a performance poet and has performed his poems in several countries including the United States, Nigeria, and South Africa.