The Song of the Floating Ghost

By Majekodunmi Ebhohon

MY Leader, the one with the silk tie,
He carries the “Master Plan”
Under his arm like a sacred tablet.
He says this settlement is a “Blight,”
That the people on the water
Are blocking the view of the future
With their wooden legs and their fish-smoke.

He brings the amphibious excavator—
A giant iron crab with a hungry mouth—
To “protect” us from the wires in the sky.
What a strange mercy!
To save a man from a falling cable
By crushing the floor beneath his feet,
To rescue a child from a spark
By tossing his bed into the lagoon.

The Visionary calls this “Urban Renewal,”
He says the city must “Breathe.”
But the city only wants to inhale
The scent of expensive cement.
The breath of the fisherman
Is just a bad smell to be scrubbed
With the sting of tear gas.

Where is the “Sustainability”
you promise in your speeches?
Is it sustainable to turn a kitchen
Into splinters for the tide to carry?
Is it “Resilience” to sleep in a canoe,
Watching the sun rise over the ruins
While the Leader drinks his coffee
And babbles about “Mega-City Status”?

You have taken the black blood from the Delta,
Now the brown water of the Lagoon.
There is no corner of the earth
That your “Progress” does not want to flatten.

But remember, O Master Planner:
The water has a long memory.
Build your towers of glass,
But you cannot teach the sea to respect a bribe,
Nor can you hide the ghosts of Makoko
Behind a new shiny wall.