Raider Of The Treasure Trove

Lade Wosornu

But what can be worthy of your life?

What dearer than the gems or your dreams;

The reason you are here? Always strive

To fly flags of joy, and, sail up streams

Powered by the breeze of love, your course

Chattered in the ink of compassion

And, fling roses wherever you pause

Heavens-on-earth your destination.

Of things which would blot out that brief

Or, breach your sails with arrows unseen

No, Rob you of your life, Rage is Chief

Rage drags rags after you, of Charity

Laughter, sweetness and light, Rage is thief

Enemy of equanimity

Rage spreads toxic fumes on every scene.

In essence, Rage spells calamity

It's sole cause? Your perception of storms

Breaking around, not upon, your head

There are either snakes, deviants nor norms;

As you think, so you feel. Watch your mind

Rage sets sail. Can ruin lag far behind?

I'll fling roses wherever I berth

My destination is Heaven-on-earth.

Ladé Wosornu, professor in surgery (retired), is a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences and a poet, essayist and columnist for The Ghanaian Times, writing on health and wellness issues. ... As a poet, he won the V.A.L.C.O. literary award. His most abiding poems are Desert Rivers and The Master Brewer.

Questions and Prayers by Remi Raji

when the locusts come, will you greet them 

with tears and blood, in the aftermath of fractured years? 

when the termites come with fangs of iron 
can you be the grit stubbornness of rocks? 

when your throat is filled with fire 
why do you watch in silence? 

where will you give birth to the red hunger

of truth, who will welcome the sailing tongue? 

where will you hide amid these impatient clouds 
will you go where the smoke is perfumed light 

when your throat is filled with fire? 
will you bury the anger in the coffin of laughter? 

you are a poet, the incurable child, 
can you dream a song for tomorrow?

or are you cursed to cry without ceasing 
about wilted seasons fattened in sorrow? 

each time you leave you weep 
as each time a lover leaves you on a rough road, 

each time the wind brings the news of your own bleeding 
they ask what will you do, why are you silent as the dead bee? 

even if you spit poison as the saliva of oceans 
what will happen, what will happen? 

still do not sleep, dream but scream at slumber, 
will you forget those forgotten in the teeth of dogs 

those to whom agony is both foretaste and dessert 
whose faces are painted in gloom, who bleed still and dance in hope? 

Salute them all, who never said farewell to our tale. 
Salute them, who always return, flowers in the diseased heart. 

To all the seeds, all the fruits, and all the plants 
and all the trees without names, offer a prayer of rains 

To the locusts and termites, spoilers of rivers 
and plunderers of farms, let the tongue become the fire, 

let the fire borrow the shine of a thousand-edged sword, 
let the sword burn and soothe the land.

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. 

The Song Of The Women Of My Land by Oumar Farouk

Like a sculptor chipping away at bits of wood, 

Time chisels away bits of their memory 

It strips away lyrics of the song of the women of my land

Leaving only a fading tune echoing the song, 

they sang in the forlorn fields 

about their lives; songs 

of how they ploughed the terrain of their mindscape; 

for memories of lyrics lost in the vast void of time 

in those days when a song beheld their lives; 

when servitude cuffed the ankles of their soul, 

and dereliction decapitated the epic of their lives. 

With a song, they sponged off their anguish, 

to behold their collective pain, 

to celebrate their gains, 

give lyrics to the tune of their lives, 

cheat the tyranny of time, 

and commune with the yet unborn 

to give meaning to an epoch lost in antiquity, 

Yet time strips the lyrics and scars the tune, 

leaving a dying song 

Dead!

Like the women who died long ago, 

Leaving the song to tell the story of their lives 

Today the tune roams the forlorn fields

Like their souls looking for lyrics

To tell the tale of the servitude 

Of the women my land 

Who ploughed their soil and soul 

For a song to sing the story of their lives 

The song of the women of my land 

left in the memory of the wind. 

Now feeding the verses of poets, it echoes in fields 

Wriggling in rhythms and melodies, 

Hollering in distant tunes 

In places Far aField From the Forlorn Fields, 

where the song of their lives died. 

The stuttering lips of my pen 

And the screeching voice of my nib 

try to sing the song of the women of my land 

In verses Far From the theatre of toil 

where they left a Song that now roams the land 

stripped of lyrics like a scorned ghost. 

The tune tuning the tenor of my verse, 

is all that remains of the song of the women of my land

Who labored and died leaving a dying song: 

The dirge of their lives! 

Oumar Farouk Sesay was resident playwright of Bai Bureh Theatre in the ’80s.  Several of his plays were performed in the then City hall and he won accolades among his peers. He veered into journalism and wrote for several local and international newspapers. He has been published in many anthologies of Sierra Leonean poets; Lice in the Lion’s Mane, Songs That Pour the Heart, Kalashnikov in the Sun and AFRIKA IM GEDICHT. 

Lovesong for my Wasteland, Sequence XXX by Remi Raji

Trapped, double-trapped, triple-trapped 
I feel the outlaw's pain 
I know the anguish of exile 
I feel the decimal of failure in the hearts of men. 
So I know. I know 
Why my sisters hang onto the certainty of damnation 
I know why everywhere my brothers turn 
They expect the handshakes of humiliation 
And I know why they don't trust even their shadows in motion. 
We've once been trapped like mice in the vice of death.

Trapped, double-trapped, triple-trapped...

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. 

Salutation

Demi Raji

I come gently 
Like the evening rain 

I come in silence 
Like the dews of a virgin morn 

I come suddenly 
Like thunder, like the rain at noon. 

Rites of first tuber and leaves to you

Oh forbears of redolent words 
Salute to you who ponder our ways to sunlight 
Salute to you who hold pestles of songs 
To the mouths of mortal wrongs. 

I salute the song I salute the singer 
I salute the patience of quick proverbs 
I salute the craft in immortal songs 
I salute the pebbles I salute the pearls... 

Give my voice the sonorous strains of bitter kolas 
Give my voice the slippery depths of colobus bananas 
Let my eyes curve into the past 
Like a sickle in the harvest of gladsome songs 
Let my blood draw the picture of things 
Gone, going and coming... 

I come tenderly 
like the full moon 
among gasping stars. 

I come gently like the evening rain.

Demi 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. 

A Government Driver on his Retirement

Onu Kingsley Chibuike

Many years on wheels
In faithful service to his fatherland
Today retires he home
And a celebration he holds

Many years has he pummeled his boozy throat
In obedience to duty rules and regulations
Today, he’ll go home a Freeman
Eligible for his country’s services

“Come, friends, rejoice with me
I shall booze and zoom myself home
Away from duty rules
Come celebrate my freedom”
“Early to duty tomorrow holds not,
Thirty-five years of faithful services
I’ll booze to sleep away my sufferings
Today I’ve long waited for”

More joy to send him home.
A brand new car in his name
An appreciative symbol
For undented thirty-five years of service to
Fatherland

“Come, friends and rejoice more,
Joy till no more joy to joy
Today frees and makes me a king
My patience rewarded”.

And so, he boozed and boozed
Celebrating the celebration of his retirement
From faithful service to fatherland
He battled with his bottle booze
On his way home on wheels,
Booze boozed his vision and clear judgment
He boomed his brand new car
And it sent him home
Home to rest in peace.

Born into the family of Mr and Mrs Albert Rosh Nduanusi Onu, Onu Chibuike Egwuatu Kingsley hails from Umuomi-Uzoagba ( now Ezenomi ), in Ikeduru Local Government Area of Imo State. He schooled at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka where he obtained his degree in Bachelors of Arts Education English. He is a rising Nigerian writer and a teacher. He teaches English Language and Literature in one of the secondary schools in Anambra State, Nigeria. Goodnight Africa is his first celebrated anthology.

The Grieved Lands of Africa by Agostinho Neto

Agostinho Neto

The grieved lands of Africa
In the tearful woes of ancient and modern slave
In the degrading sweat of impure dance
Of other seas
Grieved
The grieved lands of Africa
In the infamous sensation of the stunning perfume of the
Flower
Crushed in the forest
By the wickedness of iron and fire
The grieved lands
The grieved lands of Africa
In the dream soon undone in jinglings of gaolers’ keys
And in the stifled laughter and victorious voice of laments
And in the unconscious brilliance of hidden sensations
Of the grieved lands of Africa

Alive 
In themselves and with us alive
They bubble up in dreams
Decked with dances by baobabs over balances
By the antelope
In the perpetual alliance of everything that lives
They shout out the sound of life
Shout it
Even the corpses thrown up by the Atlantic
In putrid offering of incoherence
And death and in the clearness
Of rivers
They live
The grieved land of Africa
In the harmonious sound of consciences
Contained in the honest blood of men 
In the strong desire of men
In the sincerity
In the pure and simple rightness of the stars’
Existence
They live
The grieved lands of Africa
Because we are living
And are imperishable particles
Of the grieved lands of Africa.

— Agostinho Neto

Agostinho Neto, in full António Agostinho Neto, 

(born September 17, 1922, Icolo e Bengo, 

Angola—died September 10, 1979, Moscow, Russia, 

U.S.S.R.), Angolan poet, physician, and politician

 who served as the first president (1975–79) of

 the People’s Republic of Angola.

Inú Rere

Niyi Osundare

When your heart is clean

And your mind is good

You will walk through fire

But you will not be burnt

You will run the race

You will not be tired

You will see a star

On the darkest nights

Your yam will be white and crisp

Your bread soft and warm

Your song will be the kind

The world will like to sing.

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.

NEPA

Niyi Odindare

Dark nights, hot days 

You spoil our fun and ruin our plays

  

The fridge is warm, the stove is cold 

Hunger in the house is strong and bold 

You come and go, you go and come 

Unsure, unstable, like a dizzy bum

  

A bright surge now, then a yellow candle 

Our darkest fear you hardly kindle 

Sweat at work, sweat in the homes 

In churches and mosques and their towers and domes 

Factories go without a hum 

The cost of your darkness is a pretty sum 

Our books unread, homework undone 

Though we stay awake till the dark, dark dawn 

NEPA, oh! NEPA Some say you rhyme with ‘leper’ 

In your dark we grope 

And it’s hard to cope. 

Niyi Odundare

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.

Lovesong for my Wasteland, Sequence XLI by Remi Raji

And suddenly my land becomes a bride again 

In this memory of decimals 
You're a soulful, full-bodied number 
the even envy of oddities... 

Dressed like the garden of Arcadia 

Make the mountains sing your name 
Make the valleys vow in your name

Let the evening sun rise in gold, in your name 
Walk in beauty like the deer among hogs
The forests proclaim your antimony of flesh... 

I too proclaim you, woman, wife, mother, lover...my land. 

You're the principle of sunshine 
The embrace of pleasant fires 
The only death I wish in this wasteland

For Love is the only language I know 
In a season of parched promises and shrunken memories 
Love is the caprice of remembrance, the remedy of forgetting. 

And suddenly my land becomes a bride again.

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.