Don’t by Tonye Willie-Pepple

Don’t hold me back
Don’t beg me “Stop”
For these our eyes
cannot annex the
great river

They’ve relished
so well, the tasty
soup, cooked with
our tears

Now I must leave to
take from them
the right hand staff
of our fathers gone

I will return
for these our tears
to seize from being
their ingredient,

We’ve cried enough,
Don’t beg me “Stop”
Don’t hold me back

Tonye Willie-Pepple is an Ijaw from Bonny Island of Rivers State, Nigeria, he writes Poetry, prose Fiction and Drama, his works have appeared in Saraba, Heart, kalahari review among others, in 2013 he won the PEN Nigeria/Saraba Prize for poetry, he lives in Port-Harcourt, Nigeria.