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.