Category: Poem

A Grass In The Meadow

I do not want
to be an iroko
paling the forest
with imperial droplets
of the common dew,
monopolizing the sun

I do not want
to be a towering mountain
lowering loftily at valleys
craggy top
unreachable for warmth
powdery pinnacle
where no streams flow
and no birds sing

Not for me the centurion
who hundreds worship
and a hundred thousand obey
whose word is sword
to which uncountable necks surrender,
godlet of unmanning dread

Let me be
a grass in the meadow
matching heads with others
to repel oppressive storms
with stalks steeled by shared resolve

Let me be
an active grip
in a hand of equal fingers

Niyi Osundare

New Birth

I am a snake just sloughed
the burden of bygone years

I stand
resplendent in my new skin

A new rain has fallen
carrying last year’s debris
in virile rivulets
to meet the mighty ocean

Earth, unyoked,
breathes through every pore
dusted feet swing
to the rapturous rhythm
of vibrating roofs

A new river is here
beckoning boatmen for new boats
A new moon enlightens the sky
dismissing the tired darkness
of yesternights.

Niyi Osundare

Not In My Season Of Songs

Sigidi* thirsty for a dance of shame
Craves a festival in the rain
Bees hum peacefully in a fallowing farm
A restless boy punctures their hive
With a crooked stick

You have poked your crooked finger
In the hive of my mouth
A chorus of bees would have stung
Were this my season song

Yes, I would have told you
About your swollen testicles
Which crook your legs
Like miserable bows,
And your lips thick like hippo skin;
About the elephant legs of your mother
And your father whose head
Rivals a buffalo’s own

Had you met me in my season of song
I would have told you what torrents
Swept your father to this land
Your father, the D.O’s** shit-carrier
Who hounded kinsmen as tax debtors
And drafted people into forced labour
For the crumbs of the white man’s bread

You have really touched me
On my songless day
Or I would have counted all the rats
In your hidden shrub
Your uncle the Produce Buyer so fattened
On ugly money he looks like
A bag of cocoa with a small ball for a head
Or his brother the Sanitary Inspector
Who can extract bribes from a corpse

He whose forehead is twin
With a hanging cliff
Let him not peer into other people’s faults
The squirrel has lived down its fame for excess
It has put the penis below the scrotum.

*earthen effigy
**District Officer

Niyi Osundare

Counterfactual

at the Soul’s Sulphur Springs, i took photographs. when i went into a darkroom to develop them, the negatives went into a coma and never woke up. say something. break out.break out from twisting your grunts around a bus stop. i throw way salute o. Man no die, man no rotten. you may prostrate before those vengeful elders but don’t do it on my mat. not even between clauses and golden pots. you may be a cut above your aimless handlers. it is hard to tell whether you deserve a bigger stage or a cave. you claim you can rout a hormonal ambush. you claim you can swallow a flood. indeed you may. along the way, it is likely you will give birth to a bamboo. not to mention your plan for buttering up your neighbour–the thirtysomething snob, the humourless householder. your counterfactual expeditions come in instalments. don’t they? a life dribbling past a dream is not all we can see. a guitar wearing a night gown in a house of orange is not all we can spotlight. your heroes don’t want to stay carved in bronze. your recipes for higher social consciousness don’t want to stay written on lined pages. blindfolds, foot-locks, manacles: did they disappear within the boundaries of a glorified State? you wrote a book of rebuke for the country of your pains. remember? don’t knock your blessings. count them. i am cooking for you and i will take you to the cinema afterwards. it’s time to re-model me and you are the one chosen to do it. the one to massage my mind back to a bootylicious elation.your dogs are still attacking my ankles and am still arguing for a threatened Republic. a crotch full of bees. you may train your slingshot on a short but stained silence. a wild silence. is it a put-on or are you as mercurial as the sidewalk coos? your slow graph rises; you fish for insights hiding under green stones.

Uche Nduka

A Farmer on Seeing Cocoa House, Ibadan

And so this neck-twisting tower
is Cocoa House, our house,

Its walls are made of crushed cocoa pods
the beams of cocoa branches
its blinding glass
of the farmer’s glistening back

These coats and ties are the loincloths
of the farmyard
these high-heeled shoes our bare soles
stung from sun to sun
by insects and hidden thorns
these drivelling pens are the machetes
subdueing a thousand jungles
this manufactured harmattan
the dew and chill of the forest dawn
these telephone cables the cobra
spitting in our labouring eyes

Grown in the country
Reaped in the city
Cocoa, tree of money,
Spewing gold from every pore
For those who plant trees
In confidential files

If we cannot get back
our stolen wealth
must the shallow trick
of a name convince us
that it is still ours?

Tell the men of power, today,
tell them, and tell them loud,
we like the shinning house
they built for us
its gateman have told us
we are welcome any time
provided we wear velvet gloves
on our calloused hands.

Niyi Osundare

Document

Change the bedding.
Rescue the last
clean shirt.

Heads on top
of each other.
Feet unshod.

This genocide
is yet

to tumble into
memory.

Garbage rots, reeks
under the sun.

Smoke rises
from
bodies
in
flames.

There’s nothing impermissible
in the bunker.

What’s the value of this blueprint?

Something quite other than
god-awful rumor,
guns trained on their backs.

Air-raids, rubble, fog.
Evidence heats up again, and again.

Uche Nduka

Paris Latin Quarter

Sweet Marie-Anne, she thought
Being French, intellectual and brunette

Entitled her, in any Parisian cafe
To prompt service—and she was

Probably right, (as the Policeman
Later confirmed)—always provided

The situation was normal, and
She herself did not let the race down.

So that afternoon, she said to me:
“Sit by me, mon cheri, and order

A drink!”—Well! The waiter came
As was his duty, only to stand aghast

At the unspeakable scandal of a
Full-blooded French woman kissing

This merde of a black man openly and
Full on the lips!—Purebred son of

The Galls, his first impulse
Was to smash his tray at the black head

And shriek out for help to the army of riot
Police permanently stationed on the streets

Of the Latin Quarter…—But
He was a non-violent man, and besides,

He had the customer’s tip to think of.
So he turned to me, swallowing hard, and

With controlled French politeness, he said:
“M’sieur, please sit OPPOSITE the lady—

“Yes, with the sacre table between you, face
To face—Or mon cul, dammit, I shall
Not serve you!”—And I was still wiping off
Her lipstick, wondering what to do, when my lady

Spoke, her face red with indignation: “But
You’re mistaken! This one’s not like the rest,

“Can’t you see! He’s a bon sauvage, and has
Written such brilliant essays in impeccable French

“On the phallus of—pardon, the merits of Negritude!
Show him my dear!” she turned to me, “Show how well

“You quote Molière, Corneille, and—”But the waiter
Was already smiling and bowing:I had passed my test.

Femi Osofisan

Olayimika

Song of a first born daughter to the beats of gangan.

I am the first fruit of your loins.
Seasoned with grace.
Seasoned with salt.
I stride to drumbeats.
Flywhisks attend my hands.
Like anklets of brass, joy encircles.

I am the consolation,
born for the day of affliction.
I am the vigour,
the virgin seed,
roosting under coverlets of aso-oke.

Down the winding road, I nurture the handkerchiefs
for champions who cry…
Behold the daughter,
your blessed harvest.
Your basket of plump yams.
Your scented one.

Toyin Adewale-Gabriel

Harvest of War

something is taking its course
wailing echoes
and re-echoes
through long corridors
of life and death
where four roads meet
where two roads cross
where four roads meet
there is coming
and there is going

allow me to use
your oval passage
o maid
after the hospitality
after a sojourn
of nine moons

may i wriggle
through
the bush-path

there are streams
of blood yet to be split

I crossed the seven seas
and planted myself
a seed that grew
in water and blood

and now
to let me a lease of life
she lies
plucking pangs of pain
gliding on the chess-board
of life and death
forgotten is the ecstasy
the pineapple-sweet apple
mutually devoured

it’s harvest time
the farm is all ablaze
and she
undaunted and fearless
searches the heart of the fire
for the seed
that planted itself
in water
and blood

it knows neither day or night
neither war nor peace
no danger even in the face of death
a world in a world
a subtle settler

another harvest
and you wet the soil
with teardrops
bring a spade
bring a coffin

there are no more coffins
wrap it up wrap it up in a mat

Catherine Obianuju Acholonu

To a Passing Year

The sun has disappeared
behind the tree of another year
the moon’s yellowing disc
has danced to the brink of a new dawn

Egrets wing the heavens
with the teasing rapture
of journeying angels
deathless time-tellers
spying the shortening year
from the roof of the aluminium sky

One more winkle in the oblong face of time
one more inch off the dimple
of its elusive cheek
leaves have begun the thirsty retreat
to the back of the tree’s head
the grass is dead now
awaiting the brittle birth of April

Waves plant roaring foams
on the hinges of the sea’s lips
sands caress the water’s underbelly
cradling corals in the ocean’s ageless belly
a gull rockets into the skies
bequeathing a grey feather
to the water’s flightless face

The baobab of the marketplace has added
the fatness of another year
its fruits farther still
from our kwashiorkor hands
ribs have snapped reaching out
for the fringes of pendulous branches

Yes, I fell the year’s ageing
in the harmattan fingers
through these derelict holes
in the rags of my unremembrance
the year which once was
the king of the wardrobe
and now a wrapper
for an upstart garment

Let us plant new vows
in the compost of old breaches
so the coming year does not die
of the hunger of former days
Let us like the snake rise resplendent
from the death of an old skin
divested of its killing sting

Niyi Osundare

A Verdict of Stone

You fled this island in a bark,
breaking free from my embrace,
your soul shaped like a prow.
The island shrinks daily, the sea
closer by every step on land.

As I walk down the ruin of old blocks
into homes built on dead bones,
I know you were
Ayayughe of the tales,
gathering firewood after every storm;
pounding yam for the little ones.

No doors open where you weaned
a dozen mouths who swung you here and there;
no windows watch the cherry-tree
(its fruits have lost their savage taste).
There all is abandoned,
except the soil God keeps for His testament.

And here I empty this bottle from my travels
over your head; the ocean deepened our love.
Since you broke faith with flesh,
rags sewn to dress you,
I discern dirt piling and piling up
at the beach, the line between us.

In your flitting twilight, you called
my name with your last breath,
and I held you; but you were already
irrevocably possessed for the endless journey.
Today I call your name, Amreghe,
with an elephant tusk;
the island vibrates with your music.

Tanure Ojaide

A Second Olympus

From the rostrum they declaimed
On martyrs and men of high ideals
Whom they sent out,
Benevolent despots to an unwilling race
Straining at the yoke,
Bull-dozers trampling on virgin ground
In blatant violation.
They trampled down all that was strange
And filled the void
With half-digested alien thoughts;
They left a trail of red
Wherever their feet had passed.
Oh, they did themselves fine
And strutted about the place,
Self-proclaimed demi-gods
From a counterfeit Olympus.
One day they hurled down thunderbolts
On a toiling race of earthworms.
They might have rained down pebbles
To pelt the brats to death
But that was beneath them.
They kept up the illusion
That they were fighting foes
Killing in the name of high ideals.

At the inquest they told the world
The worms were becoming pests.
Moreover, they said,
They did not like wriggly things.
Strange prejudice for gods.

Mabel Segun

Release

Iwapele, release me
it is time to offer my pollen to the wind

When the once-sacred shrines fill with vulgar masks
& the sibilating chorus of sycophants usurp the air

When Ogun’s hammer swings in desecrated hands
& wanton carnage spreads in the forge, to cowed applause

When the acid lips of falsehood lick the newspapers
& amidst the spittle, one swims alone

When the fists of power throttle the daily headlines
& amidst the babble, one strains alone

(& we all have our numerous reasons for silence:
we can stand by a furnace and shun the heat pleading that we are deaf to the bellows:
we can stand at peace by a grinding saw with the excuse that it is only morning yet, that we have not begun to chisel ourselves out nor shape the contours of our rage…)

Release me:
in my belly is the foetus of a struggling scream
I wait, tottering, on the horizon of slogans

Release me, the road is waiting…

Femi Osofisan

Month Of Falling Leaves

You have come
in the month of falling leaves
gliding down the membraned carpet
of my unrolling quest

You have come
when cotton pods beam fluffy smiles
to the opening sun
you are the woolen laughter
on the silky lips
of my draper twigs

Come,
walk straight in
and ply my heart
with your sandalless feet
bathe their soles
in the supple camwood of my soul
while your toes rustle
the velvet veins of my yearning

You have come
in the month of falling leaves
when ripened foliage cradles the back
and hot shafts seed the moist valley
of baring ridges

You have come
in the month of lowland flowers
and together
we shall watch the egret
wing the virgin face of our eager sky

Niyi Osundare

The Pillar is Fallen

The pillar of which I stand has fallen
Snapped like a twig in the harmattan
Termites have eaten up
A house of many years

The sun I so busily put
In my sky at dawn
Has disappeared before the noon
The sun I put in time’s store
To light the hours of lengthening shadows
Where is the cloth for the cold
After the chickens have gone to roost?

Who will carry my umbrella to the gathering
Unroll my rafia mat
And keep my company when we unravel
The mystery of words?

When the sun is finally down
Behind the trees
Shall I frequent neighbors’ houses
And shout my name
At the bolted doors of relatives?

Shall I stay in an empty chamber
Mouth watering on the sound
Of pounding pestles?

Better to leave now
With some food in the stomach
Than face an empty evening
In the company of begging bowls.

Niyi osundare

The Stars Did It

The day our legs sharpened
for the long-awaited dance
the drummers took their drum away
our longing was lamed by silent grief

They say the stars did it

The year we longed for big yams
to fatten our famished hopes
and put the lustre back
in sunken sockets
the sky went dry
the earth a cauldron of broiling hunger

And they say the stars did it

In GRAs* children quarrel
over a choice of cars
strutting out in the costliest velvet
from the looms of Europe
cash registers cough out tapes
on brimming shopping baskets
and the choicest beef saunters
into silver pots

while

we wake up wondering
where the bread to dry the tears
of weeping children
where, just where, the clothes
for the harmattan skin
of the old

And they say the stars did it

Akilapa’s father washed clothes
for a living
his mother split palm-kernels
for their meatless meals
their son walked naked
till his testicles could put
a baby in a woman’s womb
Akilapa left the village one year
coming back the next
with a glittering Mercedes
and city women with buttocks
like galloping mountains

And they say the stars did it

We say where are these stars
so blind in one eye
that half their sway in dark?

We shall rip down the stars today
and give them a second eye
we will then hold them in
our own hands
and make them shine our will

If the stars are
We make them be.

*Government Reserved Areas

Niyi Osundare

Elegy For A Child

This is how the world ends:
First, all beauty will die –
All that is green and pure, all
That inspires, elevates; all talent, for beauty,
Like yours, child, is a great talent.

Then all courage will die – all hope,
All that keep the fires burning,
All that won’t be bowed, cowed – like
You, child, who smiled and smiled to the end.

After beauty, and laughter, and courage,
After the fishes in the sea,
After the leaves are variegated, and
The flowers blighted, when
All songs have ended, then the
World’s roof will cave in, because
When you left, dear child,
The world’s pillar also crumbled.

Helon Habila

Alarinka

passed from palm to palm
like a jubilee penny
my crown rubbed clean
of its copper glint

rolled from bank to bank
like a boulder, river-plucked
from by upland base
jostled of my edges
i egg towards the sea

i am a toy-thing
thrown in to tease the waves
by beach brats
I have touched the threshold
of the sea
riding beachwards on the saddle
of undulating waves

i the roof
beamed on the secret
of the bedchamber
the earth
beholding the open mystery
of underskirts.

*Alarinka = wanderer

Niyi Osundare

The Fate of Vultures

O Aridon*, bring back my wealth
from rogue-vaults;
legendary witness to comings and goings,
memory god, my mentor,
blaze an ash-trial to the hands
that buried mountains in their bowels,
lifted crates of cash into their closets.

I would not follow the hurricane,
nor would I the whirlwind
in their brazen sweep-away;
they leave misery in their wake.
I would not spread my ward’s wealth in the open
and stir the assembly to stampede;
I would not smear my staff with the scorn of impotence.

You can tell
when one believes freedom is a windfall
and fans himself with flamboyance.
The chief and his council, a flock of flukes
gambolling in the veins of fortune.
Range chickens, they consume and scatter…
They ran for a pocket-lift
in the corridors of power
and shared contracts at cabals–
the record produce and sales
fuelled the adolescent bonfire of fathers.

Shamgari, Shankari, shun garri
staple of the people
and toast champagne;
Alexius, architect of wind-razed mansions,
a mountain of capital.
Abuja has had its dreams!

O Aridon, bring back my wealth
from rogue-vaults;
they had all their free days,
let today be mine.
Cut back pictures of shame
for I know why
the gasping eagle, shorn of proud feathers
sand-ridden, mumbles its own dirge
gazing at the iroko
it can no longer ascend…

Pity the fate of flash millionaires.
If they are not hurled into jail, they live
in the prisonhouses of their crimes and wives
and when they die, of course, only their kind
shower praises on vultures.

*Aridon: god of memory and muse of the Urhobo people of Nigeria

Tanure Ojaide

Song

You are the sandstorm beneath my skin
the salt in the raw bleeding flesh

You are the flagellation and the herb

You are the hurricane of my restless nights
the conversation that soon becomes an argument

You are the flagellation and the herb

Into your cup my life runs ever-flowingly
into your agitated arms: my jural mirror

You are the flagellation and the herb

And, when I kneel, it is for you I crave
you are my song: I know no other

Odia Ofeimun

We Have Waited So Long

We have waited this long
to see the moon put a smile
on the crescent lip of the sky
we have waited so long
around the hearth
we cannot eat our food raw

We have watched a youthful sun
unroll the mat of a spreading day
our morning is born
on the bed of a breezy dawn

we have waited so long
around the hearth
we cannot eat our food raw

We have watched the tendril
sprout its first leaves
small like a rat’s ears
then bloom into a grove
on the conquered pinnacle of stakes
below, water yams hood heap brows
with the compound carpet of mangrove leaves

we have waited so long
around the hearth
we cannot eat our food raw

We have seen the green moon of dusk
pale into the amber disc
of the protracted night
the unsure showers of the first rain
thicken into the thudding throng of
the month of the ripening maize

we have waited so long
around the hearth
we cannot eat our food raw

We have smelt passing months
seasoning our dreams on hope’s branches
sappy like a pawpaw in the rains
tiptoe, we stand on the edge
of a hungry dawn
our outstretched hands
plucking the fruits of a mellowing morrow

we have waited so long
around the hearth
we cannot eat our food raw

Niyi Osundare

The Dialogue

Perched on his balcony of pleasure,
beside a range of gifts,
the King asked the Poet
who stood below to pay homage:
“How are my people faring
on this beautiful day?”

The Poet stretched his ostrich neck
and readied the traditional trick
of “We thank our God and our King by whose twin grace
our heads still sit on our necks…”
but the lie choked his weaverbird throat,
and instead he answered:
“Your Highness, your people are too hungry
to see the beauty of any day;
things are getting worse by the day
as we wait for the better days
which you promised this time last season,
the same promise we’ve always heard
from the echo of every voice
that has ever occupied that throne
upon which you sit”
Livid, like a seven-baralled thunder
the King withdrew with his gifts
and the Poet starved with the people.

Funso Aiyejina

Boundless

Boundless
For when we were
Young and playful,
Our joyous laughter
Rang out echoes through
Every street,
Enlivened by our boundless
Youthfulness.

For when we were
Young and playful,
We would jump buses
Standing or moving,
Ticketless to nowhere
And everywhere,
Knowing no limits,
Knowing no particular
Place to get off.

For when we were
Young and playful,
I met a stranger then,
Caring little about
His looks,
Just being young
Curious and fearless
On a moving empty
London bus,
But for us restless
Young and playful ones,
Filling up, No,
Taking over an
Empty London bus
To make life anew,
Posing, loving us
And strangers in
Boundless youthfulness,
Knowing not,
Caring little
What we were,
What we are
Going to become.

Ifi Amadiume

The Eunuch’s Child

The eunuch’s child lives
in a land beyond the seas
he will mount the saddle
of the waves, someday,
and bring him back
in a galloping boat

They want more yam
for the city stomach
more maize for the bottomless boot
of the glittering Mercedes
those who do government work
must feed and fart;
who does not know
that wisdom rumbles loudest
in a bulging belly?

Already,
our rice grows in America
our cattle graze in Argentina
our milk flows from Holland
every stomach in our land
is the bowel of the United Nations

Oh! if only yam would grow in Europe
we would send a thousand ships today
and stop worrying about wayward weeds
about droughts which crack the land
like a harmattan lip
about floods which carry pregnant heaps
down the busy hill
into the wolfish jaws
of the tricky Atlantic

Oh! if only yam will grow in Europe
we would buy a million barns
with our oil billions
and import white princesses
to pound for our kings

But since yam never grows in Europe
we will bring Europe here
to grow for us:

Bring in caterpillars with grating chains
and watch their millipede legs
fracture on the first farm
(Europe’s good is better than our best)
Haul in fertilizers from every corner
our sleeping soil must be woken
with profits in Europe’s banks
and bribes in our rulers’ pockets

Haul in fertilizers
and banish old farmers
to their rickety huts
Haul in fertilizers
for the concrete floor
of government warehouses
Haul in fertilizers
to lend a green cloak
to our kickback revolution

And if yam does not grow still
we will serve soil-wakeners
for an austerity dinner

The eunuch’s child lives
in a land beyond the seas
he will mount the saddle
of the waves, someday,
and bring him back
in a galloping boat

Niyi Osundare

Cut Down Too Soon

Cut Down Too Soon
It is simply that you
Are not one of the lucky ones,
I would have told you so,
As I waited and waited all of
Spring for if you recall,
The red thing I once saw
Unexpectedly in the wrong
Season time, as I watched
The slow awakening of the birds
Returning in their pairs and groups.
They seem to know the
To-do list, as we can see
Intricate nests appearing
On selected trees,
Some even daring at summit
Places, so high.

The trees knowingly are welcoming,
I see two others,
One in front of you,
Another at your back,
Branches shooting out, reaching
Widely in a pretend greening,
Scattered here and there.
They know to do the needed
City-space-hustle.
They know to do the needed
Quickie yield,
They answer to the optimization
Rushing call.

And you thinking differently,
Like a cunny tortoise,
Retreating inwardly in to-do reverse.
I would have told you of city
Impatience, were I still near.
You did not do your
To-do list like the birds,
To fill out your greening
Quickly enough,
Early in springtime.
I would have told you
Of fleeting city timing,
Of city people, of their short
Attention span,
Refusing you filling out time,
Cut down too soon,
In prohibitive acts,
Covered in lies.

And you like a cunny tortoise,
Sprouting anew.
I hear you were doing
Your to-do springtime list
Far deep beneath the lines,
Shooting out roots,
Spreading who knows what
Under the surface
Of things!
All of the impatience of
City people that cut you down,
Thinking it’s all over now,
But I hear you still
In the rumbling bellow!
I hear you still more loudly!
Your stump, standing,
Rounded like a steady
Native drum beating,
Now the waiting is over,
In a new transformation,
To sound forever, not just
For the greening in springtime!

Ifi Amadiume

Carnival Comes To You

Carnival Comes To You
Surprisingly they jumped me on a standing train
Seeing me colorfully suited to the sounding of the day,
Dressed to the drumbeat of Notting Hill carnival.
Even then nothing like seeing girls covered in beaded
Scanty tops, deliberately made elaborately intense,
Beautifully tattooed smooth black skins suited for it.
The body knows itself what fits it.
White girls seemingly quiet at first,
Faces dug into open books, soon losing focus with waists beginning
Slowly to move, breaking rigidity as entire carnival whiners
Jumping me on a circle line train as if to say if you don’t
Go to carnival here we are,
Carnival comes to you our African Sista,
Saying it is just once a year,
Come see what we’ve got,
Round and round in endless circles is not
The place for we,
Come walk and whine the waist with we,
Steel pan of steel band calls,
Mangrove Mas band calls,
Wind, wind, wind the waist with we,
Boom, boom, boom, shaking the earth.
Me taking to the train looking to unwind,
Hear me now saying see you all at Notting Hill Carnival.

Then I see this one that must have been coming back already from
Notting Hill Carnival,
His flower patterned shirt now running redder in front
Hangs loose on saggy pants once something of a fancy pant,
Disheveled hair like spikes dyed jet black shooting up
In the air,
The body says it all though in new decisive swagger,
Showing Carnival giving him back something purposeful
Of his own,
Stronger now for a new day to again confidently
Walk these streets,
Streets usually somber these days,
Beaten down by endlessly lying politicians and
Their punitive austerity measures, we find a bit of
Fresh air to fill up our empty dry lungs,
So you see us exuding new energy dancing, shouting,
In awakened streets again reassured by daring moves,
Boom, boom, boom, shaking the earth,
Not the assortment of DJs, not the mountainous
Giant sound systems,
Just I and I the natural self giving off enormous
Vibes, energizing an entire train all the way
To Notting Hill Carnival!

Ifi Amadiume

A Dialogue Of The Drums

When I raise my voice
The world will be my chorus
I, owner of the throat for pleasing songs,
And hands sculptured
for the talkative face of the drum
But there are some people I know
People whose name I will not mention
Whose hippo hands slap the drum
Like a slab of flabby flesh
Flogging mere noise from
Its tuneful belly

*

When the target of a proverb
Feigns the ignorance of an alien
Tell him to chide the cowardice
Of his hands.
I understand all your words
And even those you haven’t spoken
But hear this if your fledgeling ears
Have not been blocked
By the excess of juvenile praise
Hear this, and listen well:
I hail from a line of drummers
And understand perfectly
The language of the leather:
Bata which speaks with two elegant mouths
Omele which carries a high-pitched face
Round like a moon caught
In the wakeful ambush of the second cock
And gangan which wasped its waist
For the embrace of prodding arms

*

Let me save you now
Before you drown in the torrent of selfpraise
Excessive feasting on the jungle hunt
And the village never sees the killing fierceness
Of the cat’s claws
I will sing my own song the way that pleases
The ear of my heart
Listen first to the leather of my mouth
I was born with a song in my throat
And my hands on the face of the drum
I have thrilled royal steps
With gbedu‘s majestic accent
And learnt why egiri turns thick ears
To the hunter’s feeble arrows
I have put a stick to ibembe
Urging virgin brides to dance to
The virtue between their legs
When I raise my voice
The world joins the chorus

*

Whatever song you raise
Is what the world sings after you
You singer of royal songs
Your drum, dumb in the market place,
Only talks in the palace of gold
Your song extols those whose words
Behead the world

*

Let runners of accusing songs
Put legs in their words
Lest they be like a woman’s opoo
Sprawling like a beheaded snake

*

I will not only give legs to my coiling words
I will also give them the fang of facts
When last did your hands touch reso
Which celebrates the coming of a newborn,
Ogbele which warms the grave of the dead one
Where were you whenadan filled the night
With the shame of Apeloko
Who proved too sharp with the neighbour’s yams?
I know where you were
For I will not be like the cunning one
Who asks questions whose answers
He already knows
You were in the palace, running endless errands
Like a shuttle in the loom
Your eunuch drum a dumb stool
For harem buttocks

*

Your drums is sounding too loud
It may soon reach the tearing point
You have reached the neck of the palm
You may soon find the earth
Cradling your broken head.
Must we all extract paltry pennies
From squalid lanes
Frequenting miserable ceremonies
Like vultures bald as
The drums we beat?
Your reso is not wide enough for my hands
And let him die of thirst
Who thinks my fish should not find a river
Broad enough to suit its fins

*

Listen, palace singers, listen royally
Your fish will come belly up someday
Its underside beamed at the laughing sun
Those whose relatives thrive on leftovers
Should not mourn when ceished
By the falling table
The day is coming, coming fast
I can almost see its sun behind the moon
When your solo will find no chorus
The day is coming
When your drum will be mute
Like a royal statue
For if you listen properly
To the dying echoes of your drum
You will hear this resounding fact
The people always outlast the place

bata, omele, gangan, gbedu, ibembe, reso, ogbele and adan are types of drums; also names of dances associated with them.
Gbedu is a royal drum, adan a satirical drum (in Ikere Ekiti); others are mostly for entertainment.
egiri: the animal whose thick skin is used for gbedu
oopo: money belt made of cloth, worn by women.

Niyi Osundare

Where The Nightmare Begins

You are probably dreaming
to go very far in your field,
and you are already living towards it.

When you have gone a long way,
the hopescope will change–
there will be no cowdung to cover you,
no hedges to slip into.
You will then be in the limelight,
the sun-swathed emperor of a vast country.

And there the nightmare begins.
You can always be caught naked
and others will freeze that in their minds–
a photo to brandish before you
when you least need a sore past.

And when you have gone that far,
you become everybody’s vision
of a worthy adversary–
you sleep with eyes open
and hands clenched.

You will have to love
the uniform growth
which remained so low
for you to be seen everywhere–
perhaps, an accident; but
don’t forget that without feet
firm on the ground,
the head wouldn’t be so high.

Upon your arrival,
there’s a wholesale offer
of unlimited openess;
and you have to prove others wrong
that you haven’t gone this far
only to blow your name into the winds!

Tanure Ojaide

The New Brooms

The streets were clogged with garbage
the rank smell of swollen gutters
claimed the peace of our lives

The streets were blessed with molehills
of unwanted odds and bits

Then, they brought in the bayonets
to define the horizons of our days
to keep the streets clear
they brought in the new brooms

To keep the streets clear
they brought in the world-changers
with corrective swagger-sticks
they brought in the new brooms
to sweep public scores away.

But today listen today
if you ask why the wastebins are empty
why refuse gluts the public places unswept
they will enjoin you to HOLD IT:
to have new brooms, that’s something.

And if you want to know why
the streets grunt now
under rank garbage
under the weight of decay, of nightsoil
more than ever before
they will point triumphantly, very triumphantly
at their well-made timetable:

“We shall get there soonest;
nightsoil clearance is next on the list.”

Odia Ofeimun

An In-law’s Message

Don’t treat me like a baby, in-law,
at thirty and five I am too old
to toss on cradling laps

You gave me your daughter to marry
but take yam and fish from the concubine

No, in-law,
if you truly look at me
you will see I do not carry a tail
behind my back

In-law,
you are like the white man
who made the pencil one day
and the next flooded the world with erazers.

Niyi Osundare

Listen, Book Wizards

Let no one mistake
the slowness of the cat
for a flash of fear
when it is pouncing time
the speed of the paw
will surprise the mouse’s impertinence

Listen, you book wizards
your pens are spears
in the eye of this land
your ink the stench
coursing through gutters
and government offices
carrying debris of rot
from the stagnant pond
of legislative houses

The laws of your books
bow a million heads
hunching backs once straight
like young rubber trees
they turn the world upside down
for you to lick the spill

We know who harvested a contract for steel
but built wooden bridges collapsing
under the first feet
the policeman who murdered an only child
to win your country’s honours
the naira king who hoarded rice
so we can all owe our lives to him

We know it all
for with all this long throats
who still seeks magic
in the disappearance of food?
we know it all
we so long schooled
in the language of suffering

Let no one mistake our sleep
for a stupor of death
the slowness of the cat
is skill
not a lack
of will.

Niyi Osundare

The Spring’s Last Drop

I can still recall their laughter
as they spoke of “lost virtue”.
I, Obianuju
I have learnt to live in scarcity.

So, cautiously,
I choose my steps
labouring up the steep hill
bearing on my head
in a clay pot
the spring’s last drop

but from the bushes
a sweet melody
streams forth
and fills my ears
disarming
tantalising

and the body
is tempted to sway
leading the feet
off the straight path

and the eyes
are tempted to stray
to find the source
the giver of temporal joy

but I must hold fast
my pot of spring water

though the seller of clay pot
never makes the “customer”
though the carrier of the clay pot
be the mother of an only son
and though this tune
vibrating in my ears
tempts me to dance
to sway my hips
in unison
with it
beguiling

yet I cannot lose it

this stem
this prop

I have laboured up this hill
through toil and sweat
and I cannot spill it

this water so pure
so clear so sweet
the dying spring’s last drop

I Obianuju
I shall provide my children
with plenty
I shall multiply this drop
shall multiply this drop
shall multi…pl…p…

Catherine Obianuju Acholonu

The Demon of Truth

Sometimes you want to
punch a human in the face
you want to punch them so hard
bash their face in with your hands
and make them scream out in pains
but you dare not punch this human
or hurt one strand on their head.
not because they are stronger
no, they are not, it’s because
punching them is guaranteed
to make you lose your job
(just before humanity disowns you)
in this tough economy.

It’s what happens
because we punish adults
who won’t adulterate certain truths
it leaves fate no other choice
but to send the gospel we won’t hear
through a child that doesn’t care.

An innocent public delivery
of knee-capping honesty
at your company’s Christmas party
from a 5-year old who’ll ask
with a ringing bell-clear voice
that slices through the air
“Aunty! Aunty! are you pregnant?”

It took a second, but it sank in
like a back-hand slap, on your cheek
you flounder around for words, find none
because your tongue has become a knot
but thank God, her 6-year old best friend
steps in quickly to scold her on your behalf
“Aunty is not pregnant, Aunty is just fat!”

And that’s the moment sweltry shame
wears you fully like a used condom
as you look around in shock
hoping no one else heard the words
but by the way they all look away
with faces buried in their drinks
you know they heard it, everything.

And you, who’s always bragging
of how every where you go
kids love you, and you love them too
discover, there’s nothing else
you now hate more on earth
than those pesky imps from hell.

Your palm had morphed into a fist
you catch a grip and loosen it
you can’t punch a child in the face
you can’t bash the little demon’s face in
she’s your CEO’s little demon
and you’re not ready to lose your job
(right before humanity disowns you)
in this tough economy.

Tolu Akinyemi

An English Autumn

An English Autumn
Imagine a big tree,
Full of quite broad leaves,
Yielding only one tiny red blossom,
Not a Cherry, not a Holly blossom either.
It is Autumn, yet just a tiny red seed.
Surprisingly,
Yet unseen by birds,
Even tiny ones didn’t quickly see,
To pick it.

Maybe me too, I am looking out
Too early to see its changes.
It could also be that
I do not see it coming at all.

It’s nothing to totalizing
As yet.
A few colorations
Here and there,
Looking more like
Messiness.
A road obstruction by
Patches of earth-dirt,
Annoyingly like litter,
Randomly scattered
On the streets,
Sees me
Hopping and leaping up,
Here and there, wanting
To get past.

It’s me doing things,
Not cats,
Not pidgins,
Not crows,
Not magpies,
Not even squirrels,
Not so much doting dogs,
Except a couple of
Dainty small ones,
Maybe once a great dame,
They look in,
Not doing fascinating things.
Well, sort of,
Nothing like my animal friends
In my other place.

Maybe, I miss already
My ozone-environ-mental
Other place landscape.
As I see here,
No headiness of colors
Causing that
Satisfying
Feeling of drunkenness.
Not yet, I should say,
Give it time,
If the rains would let off,
Give it time,
Let it spread,
Let it fill out,
Replacing all this
Still greenness
With its own
Variety of colors,
In autumnal changes,
To stun the senses,
In celebration of
An English Autumn.

Ifi Amadiume

The New Farmer’s Bank

The government just opened
a farmer’s bank
at last a way to grow yams
with currency notes

A bank whose safe
is up in the sky
a bank robed in coat and collar
like the cricket in October

Here money is yours
just for the asking
(and if too lazy to ask
the government can ask for you)
just pawn five houses
surrender your ancestral land
thumbprint your livelihood away
and carry home
your bags of government kindness

I have only one hut at Egbake
where the land is hard
and the sun sows needles
in the sweating back
I have no cars and lorries to pledge
no turkeys for the manager’s wife
or one tenth of my debt
to warm the manager’s heart

Then go till your land
with closed fists
how can you borrow government money
without kolatera*?

The government just opened
a farmer’s bank
at last a way to grow yams
with bags of government kindness

*pun on ‘collateral’: kola (from kolanut) is a Nigerian euphemism for kickback

Niyi Osundare

Where Everybody Is King

Come to Agbarha*
where everybody is king
and nobody bows to the other.
Who cares to acknowledge age, since
power doesn’t come from wisdom?
And who brags about youth
when there’s no concession to vitality?
You just carry your head high
And do you ask why
where nobody accepts insults
doesn’t grow beyond its petty walls?

When you come to Agbarha
mind you, the town of only kings,
there are no blacksmiths, no hunters;
you will not find anybody
doing menial jobs that will
soil the great name of a king-
nobody ever climbs the oil-palm,
nor taps the rubber tree.

Of course, rivalry
has smacked the town
with a bloody face.
No king is safe
or sees himself as really great
in the presence of others.
And they try their diabolic charms
on each other, dying like outcasts
without horn-blasts, without
the communal rituals of mourning.

In Agbarha
nobody wakes to work-
everybody washes his mouth with gin
and sits at home
on a floor-mat of a throne.
Are you surprised
at kwashiorkor princes and princesses,
prostitute queens and beggar kings?
Come to Agbarha
where everybody prides himself greater
than the rest of the world
and see the hole
where kings live ther unfortunate lives.

*There is a traditional Urhobo saying that every indigene of Agbarha is a king.

Tanure Ojaide

Oya Now

By the time they are finished
with filing and colouring their nails,
where is the time?
where is the time?

By the time they are finished
with straightening and curling their hair,
where is the time?
where is the time?

By the time they are finished
with lightening and pampering their skins,
where is the time?
where is the time?

Where is the will
to suck in your breath
pull up
and tighten your wrappa
hold it well well with your oja
and say oya!
wata don pass gari-o!
once and for all-o!
make we settle this thing-o!
now now!

Ifi Amadiume

Cradling Hands

These hands
have subdued stubborn jungles
unmasked fertile groves
and plumbed the seedful promise
of loamy plains

The hands
calloused like a tortoise shell
have tended tendrils, joyous,
in their leafy dance
on the spine of stakes
hoed heaps clean
unearthed the venom of wayward weeds

These palms
have lost their lines
to the mahogany handle
of a thousand machetes
the fingers crooked by constant clutching

These hands
have cradled the new yam
fresh from the womb of earth
its bottom creamy
to the teeth of infants,
navelled head hardened
against the hammering fury
of famished pestles

Hands
which toiled in thunderstorms
let them eat
with the softening rains

Niyi Osundare

Longing

Life roars on, of course
elsewhere, as I rise and open the door.

And there is a moon, outside,
shining gently, as if afraid to be heard

It will not tell me of your whereabouts,
the moon does not believe that I miss you

and so, in the florescence of my office,
sitting alone with my poem,
I am alone and do not hear you pass

I miss your steps in the corridor of
the century, and the friends are fewer daily
to confide in, except this poem

Except this song that will not be sung.

Femi Osofisan

The Bride’s Song

Reaching the market place
My waistbead snaps
My wrapper unties

Take the beads to my husband’s mother
This wrapper I must tie again
For life’s jewel must be hidden
Not left to the wishful stare
Of a watchful world

Baba, thank you today
For the kindnesses of many years
Going am I now to my husband
The son of Efurudowo* whose yams
Wrestle heaps to the ground
Owner of the powerful machete
Whose maize drills the molars
Like seasoned warriors
My calabash tray will give way
Coming back from his farm

I go now
And the moon is witness to my leaving
Before this moon hears the first cock
My belly will be round
Like grandmother’s laden bowl

I go
To the house of a man
Who has yams in his barn
And children between his groins
A solid man who pins you down
With a penis stronger than an iron bar
Fresh from the fertile forge

Tell husband’s mother
I will take a full-throated cock
When the first night’s sheet glows
With the virtue of many years

Children playing in the moonlight
Are the dream of a maiden’s womb
Child is honour,child is gold
The bouncing seed of tomorrow’s harvest

May my back never know
The pains of the mat.

*efuru: the king of yams in Ekiti.

Niyi Osundare

When The Monuments…

For Walter Rodney and Ngugi wa Thiong’o

When the monuments to our past
are whittled down by new facts
and our dew drops of change
are sacrificed on the altar of state security,
we awake to the knowledge that
pebbles lodged in muddy ponds
must grow muddy with time…

Now that our messiahs have chased our dreams
from the sacred corners of our hearts
into the blind alleys of our ghettoes
where they proceed to slaughter them
before our astonished imagination
summoning history to witness their feast,
it is time we rejected those who
have severed the link between prayer and miracles,
those who mock our voices with great signboards
which proclaim only fairy-tale projects
and those who make us build the podia
on which they stand to salute our misery
on every anniversary of the revolution.

Funso Aiyejina

Mféálí, Flying About

A hungry woman,
Loving, desiring,
In gentleness, she is
Denied the full sweetness,
A drop of a top-up,
Ọ sọ̀ na ntụ̀lị̀ ntụ̀lị̀,
Only in bits and pieces,
Only given here and there.

Slowly, adorned in beauty,
Like flying flowered petals,
She gains in flight,
As if to say,
Catch me now if you can!
Dangling, elusive,
She lets go her once full
ị̀tè m-jị̀lị̀ biá bílí ụ̀wà
Her beginning nectar pot,
Holding her down,
Fastened to thirsting,
Desiring the full sweetness,
A drop of a top-up,
Ọ sọ̀ na ntụ̀lị̀ ntụ̀lị̀,
Only in bits and pieces,
Only given here and there.

In lightness of flight
Beyond the pain,
She no longer remains
Wallowing in one garlanded garden,
Full of intoxicant love nectars,
Weighing down her aching body,
Breaking the fragility of the
Beating heart of love,
Longing to stay true,
Only to be denied the full sweetness,
A drop of a top-up,
Ọ sọ̀ na ntụ̀lị̀ ntụ̀lị̀,
Only in bits and pieces,
Only given here and there.


In the sweetness of flight,
She no longer remains
Breakable by flimsy lies,
Tearing up by careless goodbyes.
In the sweetness of flight,
She stretches out mesmerizingly beautiful wings,
Invitingly colorful like a thousand fluttering flower petals,
Now it is her choice when to descend,
Which deserving receiver to mount,
Growing even more beautiful flowers
In the forever loving gardens of life.

Ifi Amadiume

Unequal Fingers

when the time is right
the stick will tell all ears
the silent secret of the drum

we have known famished months
and years of unnatural famine
when two grains didn’t jingle
in our bowl
and yam was gold from distant farms
cocoa buyers withheld our pay
and money monopolized the pocket
of a few
now wrinkles rack the brows
of crawling babies
the young age at thirty
our ragged roofs leak cold fears
of the coming rain

while

somewhere, not more than
a hungry shout away
chicken legs dance
at the bottom of simmering pots
blazing the torturesome smell
of festive kitchens
Senior Service children
pamper corpulent cats
with corned beef
laughing heartily at our yawning ribs

Let no one tell us again
that fingers are not equal
for we know
how the thumb grew fatter
than all the others
the funds for our community centre
built your palace
the funds for our rugged roads
bought your car
the funds for our water scheme
irrigate your banks in Europe

We are not bats
blind to the glaring happenings
of a tricky day

Soon
we shall know
how your farm stays so lush
in our season of drought
we shall know
while showing you
the gate of the town

for

when the time is right
the stick will tell all ears
the silent secret of the drum.

Niyi Osundare

Dying Another’s Death

We will not go
On another’s day
We will not die
Another’s death

Powermen (and women)
with maggotty trails
manufacture wars to turn eyes away
from dunghills in the streets

It is the ruse of tyrants
that wars be fought on other fronts

I can hear loyalties howling
like wolves of the jungle
the flag furling into a blindfold

Ask emergency patriots
who now summon you
to instant death
where they were

when

worms colonized your children’s bellies
and your tin roof was sieved
for the year’s rains
how was it spent
that million million billion
which sweetened the budget song
that roads are still dust
and polluted water distributes dysentery
in every home

Countless times
we have murdered our dreams
chasing the nightmares
of power monsters
crushed in fiery columns
we have forged gold
for those who coin profit
from fallen skulls

Call back those in Eton and Oxford
extract them from the labyrinths of Harvard
and let them serve now
the state they have always serfed

Let this war be fought by
Presidents’ children
Governors’ children
Senators’ children
Bankers’ children
Bishops’ children
and others who cut up the country
like an unending cake

For this we say:

We will not go
On another’s day
We will not die
Another’s death.

Niyi Osundare

Eating With All The Fingers

You jerk up from sleep
and find us eating
you immediately want a scoop
just wait
if we started this way
would you wake up
to a single morsel?

The affairs of this life
are like people eating
some dip ten fingers
and clog their throats
their greed chokes the land
with sprawling dirt

We will raise our voices
and tell the world
we will not be watchers
of others eating

Niyi Osundare