These three poems by Izang Alexander Haruna were especially chosen for The Bala Selection.
The Bala Selection is a bi-weekly poetry feature curated by Ismail Bala for Konya Shamsrumi, showcasing distinctive new voices and resonant works from across Africa and beyond. Through his discerning eye, each selection highlights the craft, music, and emotional clarity that define contemporary poetry in its most luminous form.
Ismail Bala is a poet, translator, and critic whose work bridges classical poetics and modern sensibility, and whose mentorship has shaped a generation of emerging African poets.
Pilgrimage
Just maybe poetry is meant for nights,
as we said yesterday…
but today
who is meant for me?
Who is meant for you?
We’ve enjoyed the festival of words and muse,
of pictures and walks…
yet still on is the festival of feelings.
Kano was a pilgrimage,
at first simply a homage to a land of history,
and to what, for three days, became a sanctuary of words
a shrine for priests and gods,
priestesses and goddesses.
But it uncovered a pilgrimage beyond all:
being with you.
More Than A Poem
On some thin way to the FCT
We saw death appear
Grim, it scared us
He stretched his hands
Narrowly his sickle missed us
Not today we said, not today.
Our hearts sank. Our hearts sang:
Big D go away, Big D go away
We just want to breathe,
Come again another day
We just want to play.
Grieving for Boys
Today we grieve for boys
who learn grief early,
learning the alphabets of grief
before they learn how to spell joy.
We grieve for boys who fight for love at home,
made to compete for affection,
every day an exam,
every failure marked in silence.
Grieving for boys undone by privilege,
not taught to fend for themselves
because someone else, some future wife,
is expected to carry the weight of their becoming.
Let's grieve for boys turned to street urchins,
whose survival depends bowls,
their occupation being outstretched palms,
boys counting mercy as daily bread.
We grieve for boys who are slow learners
in an impatient world,
for boys who seal themselves within,
lacking the courage to end it,
We grieve for boys who were never given time,
neither room nor language to name their pain
Boys lacking the strength to live fully,
Only awaiting their last breath.
We grieve for boys at the stations of the cross,
bearing weights they never chose.
For boys who learn the gun too soon,
boys whose future or whose bodies are gone too soon.
This is a grief unfinished.
And still, we grieve for boys
so that one day, after this grief observed
they may live.
About Izang Alexander Haruna
Izang Alexander Haruna is a poet, literary critic, and educator. He is the author of Letters to 42 Writers (2024) and the chapbook In a Man’s Body (2025), a work dedicated to advocacy for the boy child.
His writing spans poetry, essays, book reviews, and literary criticism, engaging questions of identity, culture, and social responsibility. His work has appeared in Boys Are Not Stones Anthology, Jalada Africa, Brigitte Poirson Poetry, AFAS Review, Unijos Echo, The Gadfly Philosophical Magazine, and The Nigerian Review.
He writes from Jos, Nigeria, where literature, education, and community remain central to his practice.
