Generation after generation
Etching a classroom's desks
Then one perhaps not descended
From slavers
But slaves
Carving in his own name
With palette knife and paint
He became an artist
A man of thrice dozen years
Now in love but always
Devoted to some higher aim
What song is that classical muse singing?
Him
Now a painting now a sketch
All in a book
Of some European genius
What tales in what poems tell?
Of world wars and Dante’Äôs Hell
He is an artist and a lover of women
And the things of man
Oft day’Äôs spiritual maybe when in pain
He has the soul of a Blackman


Osita Nwankwo Dec/2007