Gather My Blood, Rivers Of Song

Remi Raji

I 
Sometimes a man gets tired of going to sea as now 
when the voices I hear speak nothing but shame, and silence. 

When the calabash goes to the river and never returns 
The carver is drenched in tears, the drinker is famished. 

Sometimes all we have is the inheritance of loss 
the infidel body wrapped in the thickness of sins 

There is wickedness beneath the tranquil sea. 
And the heaviness above craves the lightness of love. 

So I return to the red sea that flows in the vein. 

II 
certainty is far behind in the coast, and it is up behind the hills 
each time you think you arrive there, it is uncertainty that lies waiting 

To embrace fire, you must breathe the wind

To claim the sea's presence, you must share the river's route; 

To die you must be afraid to live... 
And if you cannot kill the smoke, why do you start the fire? 

To become the sorcery of days 
You must possess the gaze that blinds beyond the light. 

III 
you were not in these places, but there's a scent of each in you 
i should know 
i wished you were beside me in lagos, mealha, cachopo, 
in portugal, 
the rustic air reminds me of the valley of a thousand stories, 
as in durban, south africa, which awakens the midsummer night's dream 
of the bright woodlands of Stockholm, Sweden, 
where I could read my palms and the fine letters 
of jared diamond's guns, germs and steel… 
the little streets knew our steps, lost in a circle of eden, innocent to the lights 
as it was in the delicate neck of the dance in addis, ethiopia 
as it was in salzburg, austria, where friendship was won suddenly by ideas and 
instinct 
as it was in Cambridge, uk where we organized parties for books and stars 

and i wished you were close by in the crazed joys of riga, 
and ventspils, latvia... 
and even absent in the many other places, you always remain 
as the sturdy baobab in my heart's savannah... 

in the mouth of night, every firefly has your attitude 
gather my blood, rivers of song... 

IV 
i love you as 
the sun kisses the day, 
i love you as 
the moon wraps the tender night, 
i love you as 
the rivers run into the rimless sea, 
i love you as 
the wind caresses my naked skin 
in the promise of rain, 
i love you as 
love is; and because they say love doesn't last, 
i don't want to love you anymore, 
i just want to be, 
with you. I want to walk your coast 
in silence, in laughter, and in tears, 
one with you as the colour of night. 

I want to marry you again in the age of enlightenment 
You will be my muse 
You will kill me and resurrect me 
You will make me dance to the song in your eyes 
You will make me all over and I will be made 
You are the lovely stretch marks over my bones 
You're the sweetness of day, the lovely mystery of night, 
and the everlasting breath... 

i want to do to you what needles of rain do 
to the parched earth 
i want to do to you what the morning sun does 
to butter nuggets 
what the honey bee does to the pollen in the shrub 
i want to hide in you, and hide you in me, 
that the world will end and come alive again, and again 
i want to love every alphabet that spells your name. 

Gather my blood, rivers of song.

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. 

Lovesong for my Wasteland, Sequence XVII by Remi Raji

But as it was in the beginning... 
We have long been lost to the substance of things 
We have long sought the shadow of the masquerader 
And we puke in pride and laziness. 

As it was... 
We who own the land steeped in fats 
Still beg the world to feed our greed. 
You who now call yourselves conquerors 
Where, where is your trophy of victory?

For those who snore in the glory of self-contentment 
The past is, 
the present is not, 
the future is nothing.

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. 

Fogetting...

Remi Raji

As sure as the deceptive day 
you're the only cell in my stem 
the stomata of unending songs,... 

Because I crave your lips, and you're not here 
I want to forget you, haunted by the paradox in the air 
you're the only thing whose epilepsy I have loved 
and I have known betrayals not like yours... 

Your contradictions have become the theorem

of what it is to love and laugh in the gutters of despair 
But I'm also a paradox, born into the treachery of dim decades 
I have survived other lives and many deaths. 

I want to forget, 
I want to forget your face 
I want to forget your face in my fear 
I want to forget my fear in your face 
I want to forget my fear in your face forever... 

Because I am possessed, my songs for you will not end 
And though the abuse persists 
it is in your tears that the diamonds shall grow. 
One day when you go out with me, if I live to hold your sight again 
the evening will wear a new name, and your familiar places painted new. 

I will be the resurrection, you the lives of many who are silenced now.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.