Dreamtalk

(with musical accompaniment: drum, cello or guitar)

Remi Raji

I will like to turn you inside out and step into your skin 
To be, that sober shadow in the mirror of indifference 

Look at me, slowly, behold the irises wherein you hide 
Wherein lies the ultrasound of hidden bleeding images 

And because you shift, you shift, you shift and shift 
I can tell you cringe to see the hypnosis of your own silence 

For I am the last tomb of an invisible age of the dead

I am the first to spread the resilience of resurrection 

For you I tremble to speak like the restless trombone 
I thirst to contain songs like the basket of chants 

But you shift, you shift 
You shift like the cynical child of an impatient father 

You shift because you fear to hear your own mimicry 
You shift and run like the extra day in a leap year

I will wait at the dock of your roundtrip pretence 
Or like grandfather's ageless stool in the square 

I will wait never to abandon you to this deafness 
I will like to tell you things you know but never know. 

And because ours is a deep-scarred cataract of anguish 
I will love you still in this age of hate and cholera 

When you reach the crossroads where nothing means 
Then you will read the road map on my face 

And out of my lips will fall the seductive words of life 
Because death is nothing but impossible silence 

And out of your lips the first syllables of light 
The first theorem of delight, the first desire of forgotten desires 

Together we shall surprise the world of the spirit 
Together we'll be the envy of the world of the flesh 

In your shadow I will see myself and you in mine 
And no one mirror will contain the sinews of our image 

We will walk a thousand years back, back 
To the hills, valleys and the beach of beginnings 

You will use my voice to compose new songs 
And when I open my mouth, the voice will be yours 

In the fresh frenzy in the lyrical light 
In the volcano of valiant passion, in these- 

We will dream dreams and our dreams will become 
The cushion stones of new times, new seeds, new fruits 

Our dream, my dream, but where are you in this trance 
I will go back to the crossroads I'm sure you're waiting...

Remi Raji

Remi Raji is a Nigerian poet, scholar, literary organiser and cultural activist. Raji’s first collection of poems – A Harvest of Laughters (1997) – has won national and international recognition. 

Bound To Remember

Lovesong for my Wasteland, Sequence VII

Remi Raji

no water runs where the Niger flows 
no fish swims where the Benue berths 

my spirit is grieved, my grief is long like the rivers 
i will not forgive i will not forget 
i will be like God vengeance of truth 
i will be thunder in the kidneys of liars 

i will remember the tadpole head 
of our terrible tales i will remember

the necklace of the albatross 
hanging in the hearts of butchers 

i will remember the bomb-game goon 
i will remember his landmines of lies 
i will remember the oasis of blood 

no water runs where the Niger flows 
no fish swims where the Benue berths

my spirit is grieved, my grief is long like the rivers 

how will i forget the pain 
when i remember the knife and see the scar? 

no water runs where the Niger flows 
no fish swims where the Benue berths 
my spirit is... 
grieved. 
i see rodents still 
i see reptiles in new skins 
i see bats flying above the flood 
and i smell the odour in the air 
which betrays the anus of the tribe 
dressed but naked like prostitutes... 

oh, i am grieved beyond forgeting...

Remi Raji

Remi Raji is a Nigerian poet, scholar, literary organiser and cultural activist. Raji’s first collection of poems – A Harvest of Laughters (1997) – has won national and international recognition. 

I Will Find You

Remi Raji

Tonight my verse will find you dancing alone 
a hurricane of desires will pass me, unknown. 

And I the anchor, martyr to your trance, 
draped, in the absolution of your absence. 

You for whom I have wandered in uncertain pines 
You for whom I have sacrificed my limbs in open mines. 

You for whom I have many names...

What delights me more this very moment: 
your laughter, salty as the rain's chemistry 
on a parched tongue, or your seismic filament, 
which gives fulness to your minted mystery. 

Tonight my verse seeks you but I'm a speck of dream. 

In the middle of it all, when you are not there 
I always find you in the finesse of sand

in the sounds of stones, rivers, and in the clouds' jeer 
in the waves, in the foams and dunes of the land. 

We will not know the day but the hour will come 

in the hurricane and the dance 
in the liberty of the trance 
in this serration 
and that imagination 
all mean less than the remembrance of fire. 

It is in that hour that my verse will find you 
It is in that second that my song will fill you.

Remi Raji

Remi Raji is the pen name of Aderemi Raji-Oyelade, a Nigerian poet, scholar, literary organiser and cultural activist. Raji’s first collection of poems – A Harvest of Laughters (1997) – has won national and international recognition. 

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.

For Nigeria at 59

Niyi Osundare

With limbs half limp and a vacant gaze

She plods through the months and hazy days

Some hail her as Africa’s Giant

But she bears herself like a hapless ant

Blessed with sunshine and abundant rain

She blights her people with needless pain

Their boundless strength she converts to curse

Their bus to bliss becomes a hearse

While others make, they prefer to fake

The sweat-fruit of others they take and take

Insatiable consumers of foreign goods

A land long lost in subservient woods

The best of her brains desert in droves

This land of paupers and princely rogues

Who fritter our flairs and drain our dreams

With their fell designs and venal schemes

A land so blessed but so betrayed

She leaves the world ever so dismayed

Big-for-Nothing is her middle name

An Open Sore and a Continent’s shame

But Hope’s wide door is never shut

Its kernel is hard as a seasoned nut

The Sleeping Giant may yet awake

When her folks rid themselves of their mindless ache

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.