An Epic of the Empty Shrine
The market breathes again, but with a different air,
Not of frantic chaos, but a solemn, quiet prayer.
The soil remembers, with a gnomic grace,
The Horseman’s failure in that sacred place.
He was a vessel, forged for a king's last rite,
Whose heart chose gold over honor's fire-light.
His soul's true journey, a paracausal thing,
Was lost to the hollow hymns the invaders sing.
Then Ajani, the carver, with a craftsman's hand,
Brought forth a drum, from the mahogany of the land.
No hide of cowrie, no skin of goat,
Could yield the resonance of this drum's note.
Its surface, pellucid, like a tranquil stream,
Held the memory of a vanquished dream.
It was the drum of a silence, ancient and profound,
Where the song of redemption could be finally found.
The Praise-Singer, oracular and frail,
Grasped the drum, heard its voiceless, whispered tale.
He felt the earth's rhythm, a beat so slow,
And understood the wisdom in letting go.
"The king has his journey, the soil its decree,"
He croaked to the heavens, and to the living tree.
"The old song has ended, its lesson now deep,
And a new rhythm wakes from a generation's sleep."
The colonial officer, his ethnocentric creed,
Had thought to suppress with a paper deed.
But he stands a monument to his own defeat,
A soul without echo on a foreign street.
He listens for the old sound, the drum’s frantic might,
But hears only the cricket in the cooling night.
He came with iron, and plans of his own design,
And left with nothing but a silent, empty shrine.
The wind carries secrets, and in its gentle flow,
The new song is whispered, in voices soft and low.
It speaks of a mother, who chose the earth over greed,
And a carver's hands, who planted a powerful seed.
So the market thrives again, with a purpose anew,
And the song is not of conquest, but of a sacred, honest truth.
The empty shrine is full, with the spirit's quiet beat,
And the new song rises, triumphant and swee
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