BURNT MEN : a poem by Abubakar Ibrahim

(for the sixteen innocent Hausa hunters lynched & mobbed at Uromi, Edo State, Nigeria)

“The vigilantes started beating us as we were stepping out of the vehicle. After gathering us in one place, the locals joined in and continued the assault. Eventually, the vigilantes stepped back and allowed the locals to beat us while they stood idle, watching. Realising that we would likely be killed, some of us made a run for our lives—I was one of them. While fleeing, I encountered kind-hearted Hausa people, who gave me some money, which I used to reach the Hausa community leader here.”

 —Daily Trust, March 29, 2025

& the hour is upon us again—

all sixteen bodies kissed the violence of the 

flames, & the wind carries the scent of burning 

names. The smoke is still spiralling in the sky, 

carrying the messages of its victims, writing their 

elegy in soot, in silence, in sorrow. Somewhere, 

I imagine angels are singing the Angelus, but 

their voices cannot drown the crackle of fire, 

the cries of men turning to ash. Beside the tarmac 

where all sixteen bodies lay, a boy kneels into 

the dust, whispers into the heart of God, hoping 

the wind carries his message across rivers, across fields 

where millet sways, across time to the families still 

waiting—to a child who counts the stars & named 

each one his father’s breath, to a wife who wraps 

herself in the scent of his absence, to a mother 

who will wait at the door, shape his absence into 

prayer until the world fades to dusk. Clearly, there 

is no end to the depth of the violence of history, 

no name for a country that swallows its own, 

no name for a country that succumbed to the will 

of fire, a country where a man watches his dreams 

collapsing into a ballad of smoke, where his last 

prayer is a name curling in the air before vanishing 

into embers. They were only men, only brothers, 

only sons, only fathers & only husbands who had 

only meant to return home, to lay their burdens 

down in the arms of their beloveds, but the road 

opened its mouth, & the mob fed them to the 

hunger of flames. Now, the wind hums their 

stories into the trees, & the earth cradles their 

bones. Now, their ghosts walk beside the living, 

their shadows flickering in the glow of streetlamps, 

pressed into the hearts of children mouthing 

their names to the wind, their voices asking 

only this:

Who will carry our names home?

Bio:

Abubakar Ibrahim is a poet of Nigerian descent. His work explores the themes of memory, grief, displacement & the intersection of what is imaginative & what is historic. He writes from Abuja, & tweets @Imamofpoets.

Image: Elizabeth Hofmann