1) The poem describes a spirit visiting the narrator at night, questioning who it is and what it wants. 2) Yesterday, the narrator's people lived in freedom under wise rule. Today, their power and institutions have fallen into ruin and indifference. 3) Tomorrow, the narrator hopes their people will revive their ancient wisdom and vision, grounded in morality, diversity, and justice for all people and the earth. Their calls for peace and tolerance will spread across the world.

1. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow
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MARCH 23, 2012
A POEM BY BURI WADDESSO

2. Genesis
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“Who are you?” I asked
Him who dashed in and out, in the thick of night
Into my soul uninvited; day in, day out
Turning it into a riot
Who are you?
That comes and goes at a toss
Creating chaos, a mountain of mess
Leaving me confused, in the cross path
Elated on onset, but despaired in the aftermath
Please do tell me, I’m at a total loss
Like a mirage you burst, then in a blink vanished, unidentified
Why hide in a flask, shrouding in a cloudy mask?
As if afraid of the questions that I ask
or with life’s secrets you bask, waiting for my quiz, to bring you to task?
Are you an empty wanderer?
A distraught fortune teller
Bereft of a believer, or a dreamer, looking for a bearer
A harbinger of horror, or a life-force, its mirror?
Why drop in and out?
As if to an abandoned plot
Unsolicited, unsought
Be forever gone, or stay tight, even if for tonight
Tell me who are you in earnest?
Do you have a past, a present, or insight on what, comes next?
Tonight the figure refuses to retire, adorned with a Red, Green, and Golden attire
With the doors to my depth ajar, I listen transfixed, without tire
I am Kush’s mighty sire, from times far
Wallabu’s offspring, the spirit that flew off on a wing, to save my gene, from receding, into oblivion
This is a story of my being
To my folks you bring, leaving out not a thing
Be my messenger
To the youth in particular, be my cipher

3. Yesterday
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Once I fathered loving sons, and daughters
A race of equals
Unlike their neighbors
Cuddled in the palm of Kings, Queens, and Sultans
Os, rejoiced in liberty, free subjects of just laws
Made by themselves, through wise heads, huddled under shades, of sycamore trees
The choicest firstborn males, Qallus, kept calendars, guarded the peace
With no arms, or charms
Just plain old moral force
Should injustice rear its head, in its midst or around
While warriors stood guard, and judges debated
Out rushed in band
The womenfolk, Siinqe at hand
A tyrant’s head to demand
And get, at day’s end
Yesterday was 1612 , AD
When my progeny’s power extended
To horizon’s end
What a pride to behold, quite a story to be told!
Awash with overconfidence, to fate’s portents oblivious
As the guns gathered, spewing a storm of smoke, and cannons thundered
Allas, O awaited unprepared, on its raw strengths alone it banked
Little aware that his horse and spear were no longer unmatched

4. Today
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Qallu’s luster, the stature is all but gone
The pillars shaken, the roofing caved-in, emptied of meaning, from without and within undone
Siinqe—that mighty smotherer of wrongs—has fallen
As if to stand never erect again
Its beauty for good taken
Trashed
Trampled upon as the proverbial serpent
By the learned, and the ignorant
And a tyrant to boot
Indifferent deities to entreat
Gadaa as myth cast, reduced to a bust, Qaallu a force spent, as Siinqe collected dust
With injustice all around to reap, only a few stir to gain a grip
Absent-minded, unsure whether to laugh, weep, or skip
Resigned on life, sacred holy books to flip, only paradise to hope
Yet with faith so skin deep
Intolerance to make up
O, a caged soul wails
Sapped to unshackle the chains, break the walls, that divides
Its moral universe
Can it survive in perfect tatters?
As it bickers
Over trivia and “isms”
Nihilism engulfs, uncontested falsehood triumphs
Its new public squares , of cyber Odaa cafes, dogged by pseudo prophets, idly vomited spites
Offered glib answers, to lasting questions
What a difference, 400 years, makes

5. Tomorrow
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The strife that never halts, stops,
The youth, its backs to illusions,
On O’s worldview it firmly settles
Shuns, nostalgia for a past, that never returns,
Awakened by the rays of a rising sun that beckons
Timeless old wisdoms, of its forefathers
By the horns it assumes
Its vision, with reason, it adorns
Not in vain, a riled world awaits
For the day that never comes, finally arrives
Siinqee-Qaallu conjoined at the rims, wed in a bliss
Shorn of dogma and mysteries
Resplendent with all its diversities, religious, political or otherwise
Reincarnated Gadaa emerges, shaking off the tear and wear of times,
Not a Phoenix, a living organism that grows
Prospers, as a universal impulse, for all lovers, of freedoms, and impartial rules
An ideal of morality, grounded in human dignity
Imbued with rationality
No mere consumer of modernity
Vowing to preserve mother earth to eternity
Rings its bells of justice in perpetuity
Its calls to humanity, reverberate across the width of land and high seas
To shred falsehood into bits, the meek O summons, its elephant strengths
Its giant green self it stamps, on all that runs, walks, and flies or governs
Lest no one goes amiss, peace-tolerance, all in abundance, free at last, O dances,
Its voices, in coherence, rises to starry heavens, which awestruck, listens!