Ambush by Gbemisola Adeoti

The land is a giant whale
that swallows the sinker,
with hook, line and bait
aborting dreams of a good catch
fishers turn home at dusk
blue Peter on empty ships
all Peters with petered out desires.

The land is a saber-toothed tiger
that cries deep in the glade
While infants shudder home
the grizzled ones snatch their gut
from bayonets of tribulation
halting venturous walk at dusk

The land is a giant hawk
that courts unceasing disaster
as it hovers and hoots in space

The land lies patiently ahead
awaiting in ambush
those who point away from a direction
where nothing happens toward the shore of possibilities.

Gbemisola Adeoti

Adeoti Gbemisola Aderemi (PhD) is a lecturer, poet, editor, author, etc. He is a Nigerian belonging to Yoruba ethnic group. A member of Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA). Gbemisola Adeoti works as a lecturer at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.

Come Buy History BERLIN 1884/5 by Niyi Osundare

I looked round for vendors of my own past,
For that Hall where, many seasons ago,
My Continent was sliced up like a juicy mango
.
To quell the quarrel of alien siblings
I looked for the knife which exacted the rift
How many kingdoms held its handle
.
The bravado of its blade
The wisdom of potentates who put
The map before the man
.
The cruel arrogance of empire,
Of kings/queens who laid claim to rivers, to mountains,
To other peoples and other gods and other histories
.
And they who went to bed under one conqueror's flag,
Waking up the next beneath the shadows of another
Their ears twisted to the syllable of alien tongues

Gunboats
Territories of terror...

Oh that map, that knife, those
contending emperors
These bleeding scars in a Continent's soul,
Insisting on a millennium of healing.

NIYI OSUNDARE

Niyi Osundare was born in 1947 in Ikere-Ekiti, Nigeria. He is a prolific writer and highly valued literary critic. In December 2014, Osundare was awarded the Nigerian National Merit Award (NNMA) for academic excellence.

Piano and Drums by Gabriel Okara

When at break of day at a riverside
I hear the jungle drums telegraphing
the mystic rhythm, urgent, raw
like bleeding flesh, speaking of
primal youth and the beginning
I see the panther ready to pounce
the leopard snarling about to leap
and the hunters crouch with spears poised;

And my blood ripples, turns torrent,
topples the years and at once I’m
in my mother’s laps a suckling;
at once I’m walking simple
paths with no innovations,
rugged, fashioned with the naked
warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts
in green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.

Then I hear a wailing piano
solo speaking of complex ways in
tear-furrowed concerto;
of far away lands
and new horizons with
coaxing diminuendo, counterpoint,
crescendo. But lost in the labyrinth
of its complexities, it ends in the middle
of a phrase at a daggerpoint.

And I lost in the morning mist
of an age at a riverside keep
wandering in the mystic rhythm
of jungle drums and the concerto.

Gabriel Okara

Gabriel jibaba Okara was born on 25th April, 1921 in Bomoundi in Bayelsa State, Nigeria . In 1979, he was awarded the Commonwealth Poetry.

INVOCATIONS OF THE WORD by Niyi Osundare

In the Beginning was not the Word
In the Word was the Beginning
.
Unwind the wind
Give rapid legs to the crouching leaf;
The horse of words has galloped
Through clouds, through thunder,
through roaring waters...
Throw open the door of your ears
.
Araba ponmbe ponmbe ponmbe
Araba ponmbe ponmbe ponmbe*
.
The Word, the Word, is an egg
From the nest oof hawk and dove
Its shell the sheath of anger's sword
Its yolk compostbed of bile and boon
.
The Word, the Word, is the
woodpecker's beak
Which rattles the jungle of silence
The cat's eye which pierces the garment of night
The Word, the Word, is the fearless
symmetry of zebra heights
The fiery hooffall of eloquent horses
The Word, the Word, is the armpit of stone
The groin of nodding marble
.
The Word, the Word, is the madness of the moon
The canine fury of barking tides
The Word, the Word, is the milky teeth
of coconut mountains
The joyful tears of dawn
.
Araba ponmbe ponmbe ponmbe
.
I see the Word
plumbing distant clouds for echoes of golden idioms
I see the Word
shaving mountainheads with razors of reason
I see the Word
on the lips of the gun, animally red
I see the Word
in parliaments of contending tongues
I see the Word
with ears of joy, stalks of swaying rapture
I see the Word
in the dream of a dream
in the dream of a dream [no stanza
break]
in the cloud which gathers the rain
in the rain which unchains the earth
.
Abuubutan Eja okun (Inexhaustible, Fish of the sea)
Abuubutan Eja osa (Inexhaustible, Fish of the lagoon)
Adunnni lenu (A joy to have in the mouth)
Ma dunni lorun (Dreadful to have around the neck)
.
Araba ponmbe ponmbe ponmbe
.
The Word, the Word, is the ashes of twilight
The rainbow of vagrant skies
The Word, the Word
is rocks and roots
sand and stone
rust and dust
love - - and lust
.
The Word is the peeping window of heady tails
The vital valley of maiden hiThe Word,
the Word, is the simmering song of the adze
The lyrical breath of fire on clay
The Word, the Word, is the hemhem of the barber's razor
The footsounds of the sun on the tarmac of the lake
.
Araba ponmbe ponmbe ponmbe
.
The Word is rain
The Word is dust
The Word is rainanddust

The Word is black
The Word is white
The Word is blackandwhite

The Word is life
The Word is death
The Word is lifeanddeath

Araba ponmbe ponmbe ponmbe

Give bony thoughts
The flesh of airy idioms
Let rounded laughters unknot the brow
Of wrinkled moments;
Scatter the Word
In the valley of the moon
Let harvestsongs reap the plenitude
Of waiting proverbs

In the Beginning was not the Word
In the Word was the Beginning

Araba ponmbe ponmbe ponmbe
Araba ponmbe ponmbe ponmbe

(to be performed with full musical accompaniment)

* This refrain is used for its sound (qua
performance) effect; it has no
translatable 'semantic' meaning.

NIYI OSUNDARE

Niyi Osundare was born in 1947 in Ikere-Ekiti, Nigeria. He is a prolific writer and highly valued literary critic. In December 2014, Osundare was awarded the Nigerian National Merit Award (NNMA) for academic excellence.

The Anvil and The Hammer by Koffi Awoonor

Caught between the anvil and the hammer
In the forging house of a new life
Transforming the pangs that delivered me
Into the joy of new songs
The trapping of the past, tender and tenuous
Woven with fibre of sisal and
Washed in the blood of the goat in the fetish hut
Are laced with the flimsy glories of paved streets
The jargon of a new dialectic comes with the
Charisma of the perpetual search on the outlaw’s hill.

Sew the old days for us, our fathers,
That we can wear them under our new garment,
After we have washed ourselves in
The whirlpool of the many rivers’ estuary
We hear their songs and rumours everyday
Determined to ignore these we use snatches
From their tunes
Make ourselves new flags and anthems
While we lift high the banner of the land
And listen to the reverberation of our songs
In the splash and moan of the sea

Koffi Awoonor

Koffi Awoonor Williams is a Ghanaian poet of Ewe origin. He was born in Ghana on 13 March 1935 and died in the Kenya Shopping Mall attack on 21 September 2013.

DEEP GREEN (Once upon a Forest) by Niyi Osundare

Deep green, my testament, as I forage
through this forest of vanished glories,
my memory one shell of naked echoes

Roots have shriveled in
earth's heat-harassed crypt
blighted leaves float in the wind
like flakes of careless scars

Long-limbed lumbermen have
laid low the loins of the land;
the Yes-I birds have left
with their rainbow songs

The desert marches towards the sea,
a haughty, implacable army . . .

Once (not too long ago)
I talked to trees in this forest
and trees talked back to me,
Deep green

NIYI OSUNDARE

Niyi Osundare was born in 1947 in Ikere-Ekiti, Nigeria. He is a prolific writer and highly valued literary critic. In December 2014, Osundare was awarded the Nigerian National Merit Award (NNMA) for academic excellence.

The Dining Table by Gbanabom Hallowell

Dinner tonight comes with
gun wounds. Our desert
tongues lick the vegetable
blood—the pepper
strong enough to push scorpions
up our heads. Guests
look into the oceans of bowls
as vegetables die on their tongues.

The table
that gathers us is an island where guerillas
walk the land while crocodiles
surf. Children from Alphabeta with empty
palms dine
with us; switchblades in their eyes,
silence in their voices. When the playground
is emptied of children`s toys
who needs roadblocks? When the hour
to drink from the cup of life ticks,
cholera breaks its spell on cracked lips

Under the spilt
milk of the moon, I promise
to be a revolutionary, but my Nile, even
without tributaries comes lazy
upon its own Nile. On this
night reserved for lovers of fire, I’m
full with the catch of gun wounds, and my boots
have suddenly become too reluctant to walk me.

Gbonabom Hallowell

Gbanabom Hallowell is a Sierra
Leonean writer with nine collections of
poems to his belt. He is also the author
of a political novel, "The Road to
Kaibara." Hallowell holds a PhD in
Interdisciplinary Studies and an MFA in
Creative Writing from the USA.

The Leader and The Led by Niyi Osundare

The Lion stakes his claim
To the leadership of the pack

But the Antelopes remember
The ferocious pounce of his paws

The hyena says the crown is made for him
But the Impalas shudder at his lethal appetite

The Giraffe craves a place in the front
But his eyes are too far from the ground

When the Zebra says it's his right to lead
The pack points to the duplicity of his stripes

The Elephant trudges into the power tussle
But its colleagues dread his trampling feet

The warthog is too ugly
The rhino too riotous

And the pack thrashes around
Like a snake without a head

"Our need calls for a hybrid of habits",
Proclaims the Forest Sage,

"A little bit of a Lion
A little bit of a Lamb

Tough like a tiger, compassionate like a doe
Transparent like a river, mysterious like a lake

A leader who knows how to follow
Followers mindful of their right to lead"

NIYI OSUNDARE

Niyi Osundare was born in 1947 in Ikere-Ekiti, Nigeria. He is a prolific writer and highly valued literary critic. In December 2014, Osundare was awarded the Nigerian National Merit Award (NNMA) for academic excellence.

The Fence by Lenrie Peters

There where the dim past and future mingle
their nebulous hopes and aspirations
there I lie.

There where truth and untruth struggle
in endless and bloody combat,
there I lie.

There where time moves forwards and backwards
with not one moment’s pause for sighing,
there I lie.

There where the body ages relentlessly
and only the feeble mind can wander back

there I lie in open-souled amazement

There where all the opposites arrive
to plague the inner senses, but do not fuse,
I hold my head; and then contrive
to stop the constant motion.
my head goes round and round,
but I have not been drinking;
I feel the buoyant waves; I stagger

It seems the world has changed her garment.
but it is I who have not crossed the fence,
So there I lie.

There where the need for good
and “the doing good” conflict,
there I lie.

Lenrie Peters

Lenrie Leopold Wilfred Peters was a Gambian surgeon, educationist, novelist and poet. He wasborn on 1st September, 1932 and died on 28th May,2009. May his soul rest in peace.

In The Moon for Love by Niyi Osundare

The moon is playing hide-and-seek
Behind the clouds. A mellow smile
Lingers on the lips of the sky

Tides tease and tangle
At the water's edge. The buck eyes
The doe with a deep, alluring passion

Sun mo bi, Ologuro*
I am in the mood for love tonight

I can hear pigeons cooing
In their coop. I can hear alapandede**
Swapping notes in the shady eaves

Oge*** taunts the wind with its restless tail
In the narrow lane between the walls
The baobab's bulbous boon is swinging in the wind

Sun mo bi, Ologuro
I am in the mood for love tonight

Touch my tale
Smell my song
Behold the dotted lines

On the pages of my skin
Unfurl my flower
Unravel my rave

Sun mo bi, Ologuro
I am in the mood for love tonight

Stir little fires in the furrow between my ridges
Plant me, a song, in your loamy acres
Palm my memory, mold my mask

Let rasping leaves caress the fruit
At the branch's edge. Quench this quest
With the magic of murmuring moments

Sun mo bi, Ologuro
I am in the mood for love tonight

Settle this score with the argument
Of the heart. Uphold my plea. Roar
Heavenwards on the wings of my song

See my face beyond the mirror
Plumb my soul. Undread my dream.
Say my name. My name, my name. Say my name. . .

Sun mo bi, Ologuro
I am in the mood for love tonight

NIYI OSUNDARE

Niyi Osundare was born in 1947 in Ikere-Ekiti, Nigeria. He is a prolific writer and highly valued literary critic. In December 2014, Osundare was awarded the Nigerian National Merit Award (NNMA) for academic excellence.

The Panic of Growing Older by Lenrie Peters

The panic
of growing older
spreads fluttering winds
from year to year

At twenty
stilled by hope
of gigantic success
time and exploration

At thirty
a sudden throb of
pain. Laboratory tests
have nothing to show

Legs cribbed
in domesticity allow
no sudden leaps
at the noon now

Copybook bisected
with red ink
and failures-
nothing to show the world

Three children perhaps
the world expects
it of you. No
specialist’s effort there.

But science gives hope
of twice three score
and ten. Hope
is not a grain of sand.

Inner satisfaction
dwindles in sharp
blades of expectation.
From now on the world has you.

Lenrie PetersLenrie Leopold Wilfred Peters was a Gambian surgeon, educationist, novelist and poet. He wasborn on 1st September, 1932 and died on 28th May, 2009. May his soul rest in peace.

Ode to Hunger by Niyi Osundare

Hunger walks the streets
With a retinue of naked ribs
Agbaga!, Hunger walks the streets
With a retinue of naked ribs
Behind him a legion of tax-gatherers
Bearing bleeding curses and flaying whips

Yam’s new name is “Mafowokanmi”*
Bread has raced past the laborer’s reach
Yes, yam’s new name is “Mafowokami”
While bread has sprinted past the laborer’s reach
There is no written law in this land
That desperate Want can never breach

Rumbling stomachs, dizzy motions
Sleepless eyes at war with the clock
Say, rumbling stomachs, dizzy motions
Sleepless eyes at war with the clock
Kwashiorkor children parade the roads
In a land beyond shame, immune to shock

A desperate mother gives up
Her baby for a bag of rice
Eewo**!, desperate mother gives up
Her baby for a bag of rice
Her only iro*** flutters in the wind
Held together by a league of lice

In this land of blind and soulless rulers
Hunger walks the streets, a cold, oblivious Emperor
Say, in this land of blind and soulless rulers
Hunger walks the streets, a cold, oblivious Emperor
To the few who have, this is a rich, caring nation
To the many so deprived, it is nothing short of a gigantic error

*Mafowokanmi - Touch me not
*Iro - A Yoruba woman's wrapper

NIYI OSUNDARE

Niyi Osundare was born in 1947 in Ikere-Ekiti, Nigeria. He is a prolific writer and highly valued literary critic. In December 2014, Osundare was awarded the Nigerian National Merit Award (NNMA) for academic excellence.

Vanity by Birago Diop

If we tell, gently, gently
All that we shall one day have to tell,
Who then will hear our voices without laughter, Sad complaining voices of beggars
Who indeed will hear them without laughter?

If we cry roughly of our torments
Ever increasing from the start of things What eyes will watch our large mouths Shaped by the laughter of big children What eyes will watch our large mouth?

What hearts will listen to our clamoring?
What ear to our piࢢful anger Which grows in us like a tumor In the black depth of our plainࢢve throats?

When our Dead comes with their Dead
When they have spoken to us in their clumsy voices; Just as our ears were deaf
To their cries, to their wild appeals Just as our ears were deaf

They have le[ on the earth their cries,
In the air, on the water,
where they have traced their signs for us blind deaf and unworthy Sons
Who see nothing of what they have made
In the air, on the water, where they have traced their signs

And since we did not understand the dead
Since we have never listened to their cries If we weep, gently, gently
If we cry roughly to our torments
What heart will listen to our clamoring, What ear to our sobbing hearts?

Birago Diop

Birago Diop was born om  December 11, 1906. He was a Senegalese poet and storryteller. renowned veterinarian , diplomat and leading voice of the Négritude literary movement. He died on November 25, 1989.

The Casualties by J.P. Clark

The casualties are not only those who are dead .
They are well out of it .
The casualties are not only those who are dead .
Though they await burial by installment.
The casualties are not only those who are lost
Persons or property, hard as it is
To grope for a touch that some
May not know is not there.
The casualties are not only those led away by night.
The cell is a cruel place , sometimes a haven .
No where as absolute as the grave .
The casualties are not only those who started
A fire and now cannot put out. Thousands
Are are burning that have no say in the matter .
The casualties are not only those who are escaping.
The shattered shall become prisoners in
A fortress of falling walls

The casualties are many , and a good member as well
Outside the scenes of ravage and wreck ;
They are the emissaries of rift ,
So smug in smoke -rooms they haunt abroad ,
They do not see the funeral piles
At home eating up the forests .
They are wandering minstrels who, beating on
The drums of the human heart, draw the world
Into a dance with rites it does not know .

The drums overwhelm the guns…
Caught in the clash of counter claims and charges
When not in the niche others left,
We fall .
All casualties of the war.
Because we cannot hear each other speak .
Because eyes have ceased the face from the crowd .
Because whether we know or
Do not the extent of wrongs on all sides ,
We are characters now other than before
The war began, the stay- at - home unsettled

By taxes and rumours, the looters for office
And wares, fearful everyday the owners may return .
We are all casualties,
All sagging as are
The cases celebrated for kwashiorkor .
The unforseen camp - follower of not just our war .

J.P. Clark

John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo was born on 6th April,1935. He is a Nigerian poet and playwright. He has written and published numerous poems and plays, some of his most popular works are Abiku (poetry) and Song of a Goat (a play).

My Lord, Where Do I Keep Your Bribe by Niyi Osundare

My Lord
Please tell me where to keep your bribe
Do I drop it in your venerable chambers
Or carry the heavy booty to your
immaculate mansion

Shall I bury it in the capacious water tank
In your well laundered backyard
Or will it breathe better in the septic tank
Since money can deodorize the smelliest crime

Shall I haul it up the attic
Between the ceiling and your lofty roof
Or shall I conjure the walls to open up
And swallow this sudden bounty from
your honest labour

Shall I give a billion to each of your paramours
The black, the light, the Fanta-yellow
They will surely know how to keep the loot
In places too remote for the sniffing dog

Or shall I use the particulars
Of your anonymous maidservants and manservants
With their names on overflowing bank accounts
While they famish like ownerless dogs

Shall I haul it all to your village
In the valley behind seven mountains
Where potholes swallow up the hugest jeep
And Penury leaves a scar on every house

My Lord
It will take the fastest machine
Many, many days to count this booty; and lucky bank bosses
May help themselves to a fraction of the loot

My Lord
Tell me where to keep your bribe

My Lord
Tell me where to keep your bribe

The “last hope of the common man”
Has become the last bastion of the criminally rich
A terrible plague bestrides the land
Besieged by rapacious judges and venal lawyers

Behind the antiquated wig
And the slavish glove
The penguin gown and the obfuscating jargon
Is a rot and riot whose stench is choking the land

Behind the rituals and rotedrigmaroles
Old antics connive with new tricks
Behind the prim-and-proper costumes of masquerades
Corruption stands, naked, in its insolent impunity

For sale to the highest bidder
Interlocutory and perpetual injunctions
Opulent criminals shop for pliant judges
Protect the criminal, enshrine the crime

And Election Petition Tribunals
Ah, bless those goldmines and bottomless booties!
Scoundrel vote-riggers romp to electoral victory
All hail our buyable Bench and connivingBar

A million dollars in Their Lordship’s bedroom
A million euros in the parlor closet
Countless naira beneath the kitchen sink
Our courts are fast running out of Ghana-must-go’s*

The “Temple of Justice”
Is broken in every brick
The roof is roundly perforated
By termites of graft

My Lord
Tell me where to keep your bribe

Judges doze in the courtroom
Having spent all night, counting money
and various “gifts”
And the Chief Justice looks on with tired eyes
As Corruption usurps his gavel.

Crime pays in this country
Corruption has its handsome rewards
Just one judgement sold to the richest bidder
Will catapult Judge& Lawyer to the Billionaires’ Club

The Law, they say, is an ass
Sometimes fast, sometimes slow
But the Law in Nigeria is a vulture
Fat on the cash-and-carry carrion of
murdered Conscience

Won gb’ebi f’alare
Won gb’are f’elebi**
They kill our trust in the common good
These Monsters of Mammon in their garish gowns

Unhappy the land
Where jobbers are judges
Where Impunity walks the streets
Like a large, invincible Demon

Come Sunday, they troop to the church
Friday, they mouth their mantra in pious mosques
But they pervert Justice all week long
And dig us deeper into the hellish hole

Nigeria is a huge corpse
With milling maggots on its wretched hulk
They prey every day, they prey every night
For the endless decomposition of our common soul

My Most HonourableLord
Just tell me where to keep your bribe.

*Ghana must go - Large, extremely tough bags used for carrying heavy cash in Nigeria

**Won gb'ebi f'alare/ Won gb’are f’elebi - They declare the innocent guilty They pronounce the guilty innocent

NIYI OSUNDARE

Niyi Osundare was born in 1947 in Ikere-Ekiti, Nigeria. He is a prolific writer and highly valued literary critic. In December 2014, Osundare was awarded the Nigerian National Merit Award (NNMA) for academic excellence.

Alupayida* by Niyi Osundare

I stay very long in the river
And I become a fish
With a head made of coral
And fins which tame the distance
Of billowing depths

I stay very long in the fish
And I become a mountain
With a mist-cradled crest
And feet carpeted by grass which
Sweetens the dawn with its glorious green

I stay very long on the mountain
And I become a bird
With a nest of polyglot straw
And songs which stir the ears
Of slumbering forests

I stay very long with the bird
And I become a road
With long dusty eyes
And limbs twining through the bramble
Like precocious pythons

I stay very long on the road
And I become a cigarette
Lighted both ends by powerful geysers,
Ash-winged firefly on nights
Of muffled darkness

I stay very long with the cigarette
And I become a clown
With a wide, painted face
And a belly stuffed to the brim
With rippling laughters

I stay very long with the clown
And I become a sage
With a twinkling beard
And fables which ply the yarn
Of grizzled memories

I stay very long with s-i-l-e-n-c-e
I become a Word

- Alupayida*  Metamorphosis

NIYI OSUNDARE

Niyi Osundare was born in 1947 in Ikere-Ekiti, Nigeria. He is a prolific writer and highly valued literary critic. In December 2014, Osundare was awarded the Nigerian National Merit Award (NNMA) for academic excellence.

SOME DAYS (to Akawu) by Niyi Osundare

Some days know
the secret leaning of the heart

their auricles are acres of clay
watered by the kindest dew

their music the beat of every pulse
smiles grow in the garden of their lips

there is grace in their greeting
bliss in their blessing

a merciful moon sits
in the center of their night

their hours ripen
in the shadows of a generous sun

when they pass
houses throw open their doors

flowers drape them
in their rarest fragrance

for them tenderness is no treason
compassion is no constraint

some days
are not allergic to softness

some days
are not afraid of being human

NIYI OSUNDARE

Niyi Osundare was born in 1947 in Ikere-Ekiti, Nigeria. He is a prolific writer and highly valued literary critic. In December 2014, Osundare was awarded the Nigerian National Merit Award (NNMA) for academic excellence.