To the man who cheered my childhood idleness

When want of money seized the Mario Bros from me.

To the man who planted in me the seed of madness

To string words like multi-coloured beads to see

Some hidden truth, to say some itchy sadness,

To display the velvet waves of a grassy plane in some wilderness.

 

I remember “Et tu Brute” impressed on that page

Of beautiful poetry you wove into a thickening web.

Enthralled by this beauty, the Muse had me in a cage

And soon out of my own tottering pen, I would be a deb.

The Sonnets, Othello, Twelfth Night, Hamlet: my pleasant voyage

Into the Land of Words till sunlight to the horizon would ebb.

 

To the Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon on your birthday

To the speculation on the dictionary whence

You spun your magic and awed many in and beyond your day,

To the father of the deepest yet saddest romance:

The bitter tale of hatred to which Romeo and Juliet fell prey:

We miss your plume pouring life onto our every sense.

 

(c) Nyonglema