Cell of rage

Dec 05, 2021 Letters

Dear Editor,

Kaieteur News – In a year or two, the black hair of youth turned grey.
Somber lines on his face drawn; he stumbled like an old man.
For forty years, he never saw the face of the rising sun.
For forty years, he never broke bread with a fellow human.

His companions were the dreaded silence and the vermin,
the unremitting darkness, and howling winds.
He raged and cried; he pounded his fists against the walls.
Blood mingled with his sweat, and the tears on his concrete bed.

Each day a bowl was pushed into a narrow slot.
He stared at the same cold rice and rotten meat.
He crushed a few roaches to mix in the stinking soup.
He longed for a piece of that warm corn bread,
and pumpkin pie, Mama every Friday would make.

He raged and raged against his fate
until there was no more rage left in his heart to burn.
Then he sank unto his knees; he prayed for his sanity to keep.
But each ray of light into his cell
turned into a darkness sinister and bleak.

He dreamt of the world taken from him:
the sunset, a gull gliding over the cliffs,
the embrace of a maiden, and a sweet kiss.
But the forbidden cell mocked his every dream;
the bars of steel grew taller with each tortured season.

And when he was exonerated, and walked out a freed man,
he gazed at a world he could scarcely understand.
The forests were all gone.
He saw jungles of gleaming unending miles of asphalt and concrete.
Ribs of steel stretched into the clouds.
Jets screamed over his head.
A screen he held was a tablet.
But forty seasons of sorrows were drowned,
when he saw the resplendent face of the rising sun.

Sincerely,
Haimnauth Cecil Ramkirath