Poem: World without redemption

[Culled from an ongoing work: Justice is not man-made]

How do you judge the betrayal of a body that not only survived the assault but prospered the seed of rape? Or what kind of redemption is in the healthy birth of such a child that reminds the mother of being ravaged by a beast? Apparently to my frail mind, such redemption may  be as evasive as justice is elusive.

What is the cure for a memory that’s shamed with injustice and cruelty, plagued with the curse of innocent blood? Where is the dignity and pride of life in having the very same chance that was snatched from other helpless hands? The leisure to observe their misfortune and tell their sad fate in a neat story?

Is there any good purpose of being an only survivor of the massacre of all of one’s neighbors? If, rather than starve, a man eats alone because those with whom he hunted game did not live to share in the kill, doesn’t he feel like a cannibal that turned on it’s kind? Whose conscience, like a busted compass, was thrown over by animal instincts?

I see war tribunals, panels of inquisition; I see the battle for our sense of human dignity raging in towering institutions, even If we learnt the cost of a human soul, we couldn’t buy one back by exerting justice fair enough. How does one redeem a life aborted, A hope never lived? Can one find redemption in the grave? As much as we try, the culprit, the prosecutor, as well as, all the victims of an evil are equaled in their powerlessness to cure the world of evil. Absolute justice is simply beyond the power of human making! Alas, civilization is not redemption.

If there’s no God, men’s souls are stuck in the limbo of a hapless world; devoid of grace; devoid of redemption; devoid of Justice. We watch as sheer horror basks in the limelight by the fuss we make, and it’s minions hoot and clap in our faces:
“There is no remedy for  history
That is black as a bottomless pit
Spitting out the harrowing screams of the dead
Whose voices are limbs of smoke
That rope around the souls of the living,
Tugging at them and crying out.”

Indeed, There ‘d be neither truth nor justice;
There ‘d be neither grace nor redemption;
O the bleakness of a Godless eternity!
What a world it would have been without God!

© 2010, poem by Tee Akindele