Remembrance Day by Chinua Achebe

Your proclaimed mourning

your flag at half-mast your solemn face yoursmart backward step and salute at the flowered foot of empty graves your glorious words-none, nothing will their spirit appease. Had they the choice they would gladly have worn for you the same stricken face gladly flown your drooped flag spoken

your tremulous eulogy-and been alive.... Admittedly you suffered too. You lived wretchedly on all manner of gross fare; you were tethered to the nervous precipice day and night; your groomed hair lost gloss, your smooth body roundedness. Truly you suffered much. But now you have the choice of a dozen ways to rehabilitate yourself. Pick any one of them and soon you will forget the fear

and hardship, the peril on the edge of the chasm.... The shops stock again a variety of hair dyes, the lace and the gold are coming back; so you will regain lost mirth and girth and forget. But when, how soon, will they their death? Long, long after you forget they turned newcomers again before the hazards and rigors of reincarnation, rude clods once more who once had borne the finest scarifications of the potter's delicate hand now squashed back into primeval mud, they will remember. Therefore fear them! Fear their malice your fallen kindred wronged in death. Fear their blood feud; tremble for the day of their visit! Flee! Flee! Flee your guilt palaces and cities! Flee lest they come to ransack your place and find you still at home at the crossroad hour. Pray that they return empty-handed that day to nurse their red-hot hatred for another long year....

Your glorious words are not for them nor your proliferation in a dozen cities of the bronze heroes of Idumota.... Flee! Seek asylum in distant places till a new generation of heroes rise in phalanges behind their purified child-priest to inaugurate a season of atonement and rescue from fingers calloused by heavy deeds the tender rites of reconciliation