Everybody knows

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He sat on a fallen trunk among his fellow inmates
Not minding the termites that burrowed beneath his short
Nor the sun that drummed on his naked skull
Tattered and dirty

His mind was far away
Wandering through the ruins of his past
The ignorance of his childhood
The struggles of his growing years
How on that sad day
He stood in the cubicle
In front of a defiled jury

He remembered the sympathetic silence
That engulfed the room when the judge pronounced
“life imprisonment with hard labour”

He knows, the judge knows
And everybody knows
That he didn't kill the girl
The son of the rich man did
He knows and everybody knows
That for twenty years
He had suffered for another man's sin

But who is a poor defeated fellow
In the presence of the Highs and Mighties
He wiped the tears in his eyes
With the back of his wrinkled hands
Took his hoe and got back to work

He knows and everybody knows
That this is injustice
And it is sad that no one is talking about it

© Olatuja Oloyede