{Silences: Lament of the Drums}
Lament of the Drums
{I}

LION-HEARTED cedar forest, gonads for our thunder,
Even if you are very far away, we invoke you:

Give us our hollow heads of long-drums ...

Antelopes for the cedar forest, swifter
messengers Than flash-of-beacon-flame, we
invoke you:

Hide us; deliver us from our nakedness ...

Many-fingered canebrake, exile for our laughter,
Even if you are very far away, we invoke you:

Come; limber our raw hides of antelopes ...

Thunder of tanks of giant iron steps of detonators,
Fail safe from the clearing, we implore you:

We are tuned for a feast-of-seven-souls ...

{II}

AND THE DRUMS once more
From our soot chamber,
From the cinerary tower To
the crowded clearing;

Long-drums, we awake
Like a shriek of incense,
The unheard sullen shriek
Of the funerary ram:

Liquid messengers of blood,
Like urgent telegrams,
We have never been deployed
For feast of antelopes ...

And to the Distant - but how shall we go?
The robbers will strip us of our tendons!

For we sense with dog-nose a
Babylonian capture,
The martyrdom
Blended into that chaliced vintage;

And savour
The incense and in high buskin,
Like a web
Of voices all rent by javelins.

But distant seven winds invite us and our cannons
To limber our membranes for a dance of elephants ...


{III}

THEY ARE FISHING today in the dark waters
Where the mariner is finishing his rest ...

Palinurus, alone in a hot prison, you will keep
The dead sea awake with nightsong ...

Silver of rivulets this side of the bridge,
Cascades of lily-livered laughter,
Fold-on-fold of raped, naked blue -
What memory has the sea of her lover?

Palinurus, unloved in your empty catacomb,
You will wear away through age alone ...

Nothing remains, only smoke after storm -
Some strange Celaeno and her harpy crew,
Laden with night and their belly's excrement,
Profane all things with hookedfeet andjoul teeth -

Masks and beggar-masks without age or shadow:
Broken tin-gods whose vision is dissolved ...

It is over, Palinurus, at least for you,
In your tarmac of night and fever-dew:

Tears of grace, not of sorrow, broken
In two, protest your inviolable image;

And the sultry waters, touched by the sun,
Inherit your paleness who reign, resigned
Like palm oil fostered in an andent clay bowl;
A half-forgotten name; like a stifled sneeze. .

Fishermen out there in the dark - O you
Who rake the waves or chase their wake -
Weave for him a shadow out ofyour laughter
For a dumb child to hide his nakedness ...

{IV}

AND THE DRUMS
Once more and like masked dancers,
On the orange -
Yellow myth of the sands of exile -

Long-drums dis-
jointed, and with bleeding tendons,
Like tarantulas
Emptied of their bitterest poisons,

And to the Distant - but how shall we go?
The robbers will strip us of our thunder ...

- So, like a dead letter unanswered,
Our rococo
Choir of insects is null
Cacophony
And void as a debt summons served
On a bankrupt;

- But the antiphony, still clamorous,
In tremolo,
Like an afternoon, for shadows;
And the winds
The distant seven cannons invite us
To a sonorous

Ishthar's lament for Tammuz:


{V}

FOR THE FAR removed there is wailing:

For the far removed;
For the Distant ...

The wailing is for the fields of crop:

The drums' lament is:
They grow not ...

The wailing is for the fields of men:

For the barren wedded ones;
For perishing children ...

The wailing is for the Great River:

Her pot-bellied watchers
Despoil her ...





{Preludes from LIMITS from Frances Ademola's REFLECTIONS 1962}


Suddenly becoming talkative
like weaverbird
Summoned at offside of
dream remembered
Between sleep and waking,
I hang-up my egg-shells
To you of palm grove,
Upon whose bamboo towers hang
Dripping with yesterupwine
A tiger mask and nude spear...
Queen of the damp half light,
I have had my cleansing,
Emigrant with air-borne nose,
The he-goat-on-heat.

For he was a shrub among the poplars
Needing more roots
More sap to grow to sunlight
Thirsting for sunlight

A low growth among the forest.

Into the soul
The selves extend their branches
Into the moments of each living hour
Feeling for audience
Straining thin among the echoes;

And out of the solitude
Voice and soul with selves unite
Riding the echoes
Horseman of the apocalypse


And crowned with one self
The name displays its foliage,
Hanging low
A green cloud above the forest.

Banks of reed.
Mountains of broken bottles.

& the mortar is not yet dry...


Silent the footfall
Soft as cat's paw,
Sandalled in velvet,
in fur
So we must go,
Wearing evemist against the shoulders,
Trailing sun's dust saw-dust of combat,
With brand burning out at hand-end.

& the mortar is not yet dry...

Then we must sing
Tongue-without name or audience,
Making harmony among the branches.

And this is the crisis point,
The twilight moment between
Sleep and waking;
And voice that is reborn transpires
Not thro' pores in the flesh
but the soul's back-bone.


Hurry on down
thro' the high-arched gate-
Hurry on down
little stream to the lake;
Hurry on down-
thro' the cinder market
Hurry on down
in the wake of the dream;
Hurry on down-
To rockpoint of CABLE
To pull by the rope
The big white elephant ..

& the mortar is not yet dry
& the mortar is not yet dry .

& the dream wakes
& the voice fades
In the damp half light,
Like a shadow,
Not leaving a mark.


An image insists
from the flag-pole of the heart
The image distracts
with the cruelty of the rose...

My lioness,
(No shield is lead-plate against you)
Wound me with your sea-weed face,
Blinded like a strong-room.
Distances of your
armpit fragrance
Turn chloroform
enough for my patience-
When you have finished,
& done up my stitches,
Wake me near the altar,

& this poem will be finished.
{Lament of the Drums in Black Orpheus 1965}
{Lament of the Drums:}
Lament of the Drums


{Lament of the Drums, being Part II of "Silences" published in Black Orpheus, no. 17 (June,
1965), pp. 13-17. Note: "This lament is the second part of Silences. The first part, "Lament of the
Silent Sisters," appeared in 1962}

{I}

LION-HEARTED cedar forest, exile of our laughter,
If you are very far away we are calling you:
Give us our hollow heads of long-drums......


Antelopes of oilbean groves, cross-country runners
Swifter than beacon flash, we invoke you:
Hide us, deliver us from our nakedness......


Many-fingered canebrake, gonads for our thunder,
If you are very far away we are calling you:
Come, limber our raw hides of antelopes......


Thunder of tanks of giant iron steps of detonators,
Fail safe from the clearing, we implore you
For we are tuned for a feast-of-seven-soul......

{II}

AND THE DRUMS,
Once more from our soot chamber,
From the cinerary
Tower, to the crowded clearing-

The long-drums,
Awake, like a shriek of incense,
The unheard sullen
Shriek of the funerary ram-

Liquid messengers of blood,
For like urgent telegrams
We are never dispatched
For a feast of antelopes....

And to the Distant: Where shall we go
The robbers have taken all our members.

We have sensed
With dog-nose the Babylonian Captive
The martyrdom
Blended in the chaliced vintage;

And savour
And in high buskin the incense
Like a web
Of voices that are rent by javelins.

And the cannons the distant
Seven winds invite us
To limber our membranes?
For a dance of elephants.


{III}

THEY ARE FISHING today in the dark waters
Where the mariner is finishing his rest.

ALONE, Palinurus,
In your hot prison,
You will keep the dead sea
Awake with nightsong.....

SILVER OF RIVULETS on this side of the bridge,
Cascades of lily-livered drops,
Fold-on-fold of raped, naked water-
What memory has the sea of her lover?

NAKED, Palinurus,
In your empty catacomb,
You will wear away
Through age alone....

NOTHING REMAINS, only smoke after storm-
Some strange Celaeno and her harpy crew,
Laden with night and their belly's excrement,
Profane all things with hooked feet and foul teeth-

MASKS and beggar-masks
Without age or shadow.
Broken tin-gods whose
Vision is dissolved ...

IT IS OVER, Palinurus, at least for you,
In your tarmac of night and fever-dew:
Tears of grace, not of sorrow, broken in
Two, protest your inviolable image.

And the sultry waters, touched by the sun,
Inherit your paleness, who reign, resigned,

LIKE PALM oil fostered
In an ancient clay bowl:
A half-forgouen name;
Like a stifled sneeze

FISHERMEN out there in the dark-
O you who rake the waves or chase their wake-

Weave for him a shadow out of your laughter
For a dumb child to hide his nakedness.

{IV}

AND THE DRUMS
Once more, and like masked dancers
On the orange-
Yellow myth of the sands of exile.
And the drums,
Disjointed, with bleeding tendons,
Like tarantulas
Emptied of their bitterest poisons.

And to the Distant: Where shall we go
The robbers have taken all our members....

But like a dead letter unanswered
Our rococo
choir of insects, this dull
Cacophony
And void as a debt summons served
On a bankrupt....

And still the antiphony, clamorous
But in tremolo
And like an afternoon, for shadows;
And the winds
The distant seven cannons invite us
To their sonorous

Ishtar's lament for Tamrnuz.


{V}

FOR THE FAR removed there is wailing....

FROM the far removed
For the Distant....

THE WAILING is for the fields of crop....

THE DRUMS' lament is.
They grow not....

THE WAILING is for the fields of men....
FOR THE barren wedded ones
For the perishing children....

THE WAILING is for the great river....

HER POT-bellied watchers
Despoil her....





{Love Apart in Collected Poems 86}
Love Apart
{LOVE APART}

The moon has ascended between us
Between two pines
That bow to each other

Love with the moon has ascended
Has fed on our solitary pines

And we are now shadows
That cling to each other
But kiss the air only.

{(1960)}




{Four Canzones in Collected Poems 86}
Four Canzones
{Four Canzones (1957-1961)}

{1 SONG OF THE FOREST}
{(with Urbo)}
Song of the Forest

You loaf, child of the forest,
beneath a village umbrella,
plucking from tender string a
Song of the forest.
Me, away from home, run-
away, must leave the borders of our
land, fruitful fields,
must leave our homeland.

But you, child of the forest,
loaf beneath an umbrella,
teaching the woods to sing a
song of the forest.

{(Lagos, 1958; based on Virgil's Tityrus)}

{2 DEBTORS' LANE}
{(with drums and ogene)}

Debtor's Lane
{A&B:} THIS is debtors' lane, this is
The new haven, where wrinkled faces
watch the wall clock strike each hour
in a dry cellar.

{A:} No heavenly transports now
of youthful passion
and the endless succession
of tempers and moods
in high societies;
no blasts no buffets
of a mad generation
nor the sonorous arguments
of the hollow brass
and the copious cups
of fraudulent misses
in brothels
of a mad generation.

{A&B:} HERE rather let us lie in a new haven,
drinking in the iar that we breathe in
until it chokes us and we die.
Here rather let us lie with wrinkled faces
watching the wall clock strike each hour
in a dry cellar.

{B:}There was a tenement
in hangman's lane
where the repose was a dream
unreal
and a knock on the door
at dawn
hushed the tenant humped
beneath the bed:
was it the postman
or the bailiff with a writ?
And if the telephone rang
alas, if the telephone rang . . .
Was he to hang up his life
on a rock
and answer the final call?

{A&B} HERE rather let us rest in a new haven
awaiting the tap tap tap on the door
that brings in light at dawn.
Here rather let us rest with wrinkled faces
watching the wall clock strike each hour
in a dry cellar.
{(Fiditi, 1959)}


{3 LAMENT OF THE FLUTES}
{(with two flutes)}
Laments of the Flutes

TIDEWASH . . . Memories
fold-over-fold free-furrow,
mingling old tunes with new.
Tidewash . . . Ride me
memories, astride on firm
saddle, wreathed with white
lilies & roses of blood . . .

Sing to the rustic flute:
Sing a new note . . .

Where are the Maytime flowers,
where the roses? What will the
Watermaid bring at sundown,
a garland? A handful of tears?
Sing to the rustic flute:
Sing a new note . . .

Comes Dawn
gasping thro worn lungs,
Day breathes,
panting like torn horse -
We follow the wind to the fields
Bruising grass leafblade and corn . . .

Sundown: I draw in my egg head.
Night falls
smearing sore bruises with Sloan's
boring new holes in old sheets

We hear them, the talkative pines,
And nightbirds and woodnymphs afar off . . .

Shall I answer their call,
creep on my underself
out of my snug hole, out of my shell
to the rocks and the fringe for cleansing?
Shall I offer to Idoto
my sandhouse and bones,
then write no more on snow-patch?

Sing to the rustic flue.
Sing a new note.
{(Ojoto, 1960)}


{4 LAMENT OF THE LAVENDER MIST}
{(with three flutes)}
Lament of the Lavender Mist
{(i)}

Black dolls
Returning from the foam:
Two faces of a coin
That meet afar off . . .

Sea smiles at a distance
with lips of faom
Sea walks like a rainbow
beyond them.

And voice
Returning from a dream,
Descends, rejoices
Air, sun, blood . . .
And wakes us . . .
DOLLS . . .
Forms
Of memory
To be worshipped
Adored
By innocence:

Creatures of the mind's eye
Barren
Of memory
Remembrance of things past.

Eagles in space and earth and sky
Shadows of sin in grove of orange,
Of alter-penitence
Over me at sundown,
Of wind on leaves,
A song of Christmas of
Echoes in the prison of the mind.
Shadows of song of love's stillness,
Shadows of the stillness of the song
Over me at sundown
In an empty garden
Where
Wounded by the wind lie dead leaves.


{(ii)}

AT THE FIRST fork of the road
Saint Vitus's dancer,
At the fork of the lightening {[sic]}
Lady of the lavender-
mist, scattering
Lightening shafts without rain,
came forging
Thunder with no smell of water -

Abyss of wonders,
Of masks, black masks, idols,
From whose nest of fireflies,
Phosphoresence
Over me at sundown
In an empty garden
Wounded by the wind lie dead leaves.

{(iii)}

TAKE HER to an island in the sun,
Wrap her round your loin and run,
Stolen from her prison.
TAKE HER to a mountain waterfall,
Strike her with the wind beneath starfall,
Stolen from her prison.


{(iv)}

AND SHE took me to the river
Believing me a child -
Spirit of the wind and the waves -
offering me love in a
Feeding bottle -
Kernels of the water of the sky -
And she led me by the water
Believing me a child -
Echoes of the waters of the beginning -
But the outstretched love
Dried as it reached me -
Shadows of the fires of the end.
The moon has ascended between us -
Between two pines
That bow to each other;
Love with the moon has ascended,
Has fed on our solitary stems;
And we are now shadows
That cling to each other
But kiss the air only.

{(Nsukka, 1961)}


{Distances in Collected Poems 86}
{Distances}
Distances
{I}

FROM FLESH into phantom on the horizontal stone
I was the sole witness to my homecoming ...

Serene lights on the other balcony:
redolent fountains bristling with signs -

But what does my divine rejoicing hold?
A bowl of incense, a nest of fireflies?

I was the sole witness to my homecoming ...

For in the inflorescence of the white
chamber, a voice, from very far away,
chanted, and the chamber descanted, the birthday of earth,
paddled me home through some dark
labyrinth, from laughter to the dream.

Miner into my solitude,
incarnate voice of the dream,
you will go,
with me as your chief acolyte,
again into the anti-hill ...

I was the sole witness to my homecoming ...

{II}

DEATH LAY in ambush that evening in that island;
voice sought its echo that evening in that island.

And the eye lost its light,
the fight lost its shadow.

For the wind, eternal suitor of dead leaves,
unrolled his bandages to the finest swimmer ...

It was an evening without flesh or skeleton;
an evening with no silver bells to its tale;
without lanterns, an evening without buntings;
and it was an evening without age or memory -

for we are talking of such commonplaces,
and on the brink of such great events ...

And in the freezing tuberoses of the white
chamber, eyes that had lost their animal
colour, havoc of eyes of incandescent rays,
pinned me, cold, to the marble stretcher,

until my eyes lost their blood
and the blood lost its odour,

and the everlasting fire from the oblong window
forgot the taste of ash in the air's marrow:


anguish and solitude ...
Smothered, my scattered
cry, the dancers,
lost among their own
snares; the faces,
the hands held captive;
the interspaces
reddening with blood;

and behind them all,
in smock of white cotton,
Death herself,
the chief celebrant,
in a cloud of incense,
paring her fingernails ...

At her feet rolled their heads like cut fruits;
about her fell
their severed members, numerous as locusts.

Like split wood left to dry, the dismembered
joints of the ministrants piled high.

She bathed her knees in the blood of attendants;
her smock in entrails of ministrants ...

{III}

IN THE scattered line of pilgrims
bound for Shibboleth
in my hand the crucifix
the torn branch the censer

In the scattered line of pilgrims
from Dan to Beersheeba
camphor iodine chloroform
either sting me in the bum

On the stone steps on the marble
beyond the balcony
prophets martyrs lunatics
like the long stride of the evening

At the clearing dantini
in the garden dillettanti;
vendors princes negritude
politicians in the tall wood ...


{IV}

AND AT THE archway
a triangular lintel
of solid alabaster
enclosed in a square
inscribed in a circle
with a hollow centre,
above the archway
yawning shutterless
like celestial pincers
like a vast countenance:

the only way to go
through the marble archway
to the catatonic pingpong
of the evanescent halo ...

And beyond the archway
like pentecostal orbs
resplendent far distant
in the intangible void
an immense crucifix
of phosphorescent mantles:

after we had formed
then only the forms were formed
and all the forms
were formed after our forming ...


{V}

SWEAT OVER hoof in ascending gestures -
each step is the step of the mule in the abyss -
the archway the oval the panel oblong
to that sanctuary at the earth's molten bowel
for the music woven into the funerary rose
the water in the tunnel its effervescent laughter
the open laughter of the grape or vine
the question in the inkwell the answer on the monocle
the unanswerable question in the tabernacle's silence -

Censers, from the cradle,
of a nameless religion:

each sigh is time's stillness, in the abyss ...

Mated and sealed
in a proud oblation,
brothers to silence and the wandering rocks;

with the burden of the pawn,
on the molten stone,

and the scar of the kiss and of the two swords.

Sweat over hoof
in the settled abyss:

each sigh is the stillness of the kiss ...


{VI}

THE SEASON the season
the tall wood the clearing
the season the season
the stone steps the dream ...

Come into my cavern,
Shake the mildew from your hair;
Let your ear listen:
My mouth calls from a cavern ...

Lo, it is the same blood that flows ...

Shadows distances labyrinths violences,
Skeletal oblong
of my sentient being, I receive you
in my perforated
mouth of a stranger empty of meaning,
stones without juice -

the goat still knows its fodder,
the leopards on its trail -

For it is the same blood,
through the same orifices,
the same branches
trembling intertwined,
and the same faces
in the interspaces.

And it is the same breath, liquid, without acolyte,
like invisible mushrooms on stone surfaces.

And at this chaste instant of delineated anguish,
the same voice, importunate, aglow with the goddess -

unquenchable, yellow, darkening homeward
like a cry of wolf above crumbling houses -

strips the dream naked,
bares the entrails;

and in the orangery of immense corridors,
I wash my feet in your pure head, O maid,

and walk along your feverish, solitary shores,

seeking, among your variegated teeth,
the tuberose of my putrescent laughter:

I have fed out of the drum
I have drunk out of the cymbal

I have entered your bridal chamber;
and lo, I am the sole witness to my homecoming.




{Silences Pt. II: Lament of the Drums in Collected Poems 86}
{Silences Pt. II: Lament of the Drums}
Lament of the Drums
{I}

LION-HEARTED cedar forest, gonads for our thunder,
Even if you are very far away, we invoke you:

Give us our hollow heads of long-drums ...

Antelopes for the cedar forest, swifter messengers
Than flash-of-beacon-flame, we invoke you:

Hide us; deliver us from our nakedness ...

Many-fingered canebrake, exile for our laughter,
Even if you are very far away, we invoke you:

Come; limber our raw hides of antelopes ...

Thunder of tanks of giant iron steps of detonators,
Fail safe from the clearing, we implore you:

We are tuned for a feast-of-seven-souls ...

{II}

AND THE DRUMS once more
From our soot chamber,
From the cinerary tower
To the crowded clearing;

Long-drums, we awake
Like a shriek of incense,
The unheard sullen shriek
Of the funerary ram:

Liquid messengers of blood,
Like urgent telegrams,
We have never been deployed
For feast of antelopes ...

And to the Distant - but how shall we go?
The robbers will strip us of our tendons!

For we sense
With dog-nose a Babylonian capture,
The martyrdom
Blended into that chaliced vintage;

And savour
The incense and in high buskin,
Like a web
Of voices all rent by javelins.

But distant seven winds invite us and our cannons
To limber our membranes for a dance of elephants ...


{III}

THEY ARE FISHING today in the dark waters
Where the mariner is finishing his rest ...

Palinurus, alone in a hot prison, you will keep
The dead sea awake with nightsong ...

Silver of rivulets this side of the bridge,
Cascades of lily-livered laughter,
Fold-on-fold of raped, naked blue -
What memory has the sea of her lover?

Palinurus, unloved in your empty catacomb,
You will wear away through age alone ...

Nothing remains, only smoke after storm -
Some strange Celaeno and her harpy crew,
Laden with night and their belly's excrement,
Profane all things with hooked feet and foul teeth -

Masks and beggar-masks without age or shadow:
Broken tin-gods whose vision is dissolved ...

It is over, Palinurus, at least for you,
In your tarmac of night and fever-dew:

Tears of grace, not of sorrow, broken
In two, protest your inviolable image;

And the sultry waters, touched by the sun,
Inherit your paleness who reign, resigned
Like palm oil fostered in an ancient clay bowl;
A half-forgotten name; like a stifled sneeze. .

Fishermen out there in the dark - O you
Who rake the waves or chase their wake -
Weave for him a shadow out of your laughter
For a dumb child to hide his nakedness ...

{IV}

AND THE DRUMS
Once more and like masked dancers,
On the orange -
Yellow myth of the sands of exile -

Long-drums dis-
Jointed, and with bleeding tendons,
Like tarantulas
Emptied of their bitterest poisons,

And to the Distant - but how shall we go?
The robbers will strip us of our thunder ...

- So, like a dead letter unanswered,
Our rococo
Choir of insects is null
Cacophony
And void as a debt summons served
On a bankrupt;

- But the antiphony, still clamorous,
In tremolo,
Like an afternoon, for shadows;
And the winds
The distant seven cannons invite us
To a sonorous

Ishthar's lament for Tammuz:


{V}

FOR THE FAR removed there is wailing:

For the far removed;
For the Distant ...

The wailing is for the fields of crop:

The drums' lament is:
They grow not ...

The wailing is for the fields of men:

For the barren wedded ones;
For perishing children ...

The wailing is for the Great River:

Her pot-bellied watchers
Despoil her ...







{Heavensgate}

{I The Passage}


BEFORE YOU, mother Idoto,{1}
naked I stand;
before your watery presence,
a prodigal

leaning on an oilbean,
lost in your legend.

Under your power wait I
on barefoot,
watchman for the watchword
at Heavensgate;

out of the depths my cry:
give ear and hearken ...

{1 A village stream. The oilbean, the tortoise and the python are totems for her worship.}


DARK WATERS of the beginning.

Rays, violet and short, piercing the gloom,
foreshadow the fire that is dreamed of.

Rainbow on far side, arched like boa bent to kill,
foreshadows the rain that is dreamed of.

Me to the orangery
solitude invites,
a wagtail, to tell
the tangled-wood-tale;
a sunbird, to mourn
a mother on a spray.

Rain and sun in single combat;
on one leg standing,
in silence at the passage,
the young bird at the passage.

SILENT FACES at crossroads:
festivity in black ...

Faces of black like long black
column of ants,

behind the bell tower,
into the hot garden
where all roads meet:
festivity in black ...

O Anna at the knobs of the panel oblong,
hear us at crossroads at the great hinges

where the players of loft pipe organs
rehearse old lovely fragments, alone -

strains of pressed orange leaves on pages,
bleach of the light of years held in leather:

For we are listening in cornfields
among the windplayers,
listening to the wind leaning
over its loveliest fragment ...

{II Initiations}

SCAR OF the crucifix
over the breast,
by red blade inflicted
by red-hot blade,
on right breast witnesseth

mystery which I, initiate,
received newly naked
upon waters ofthe genesis
from Kepkanly.{2}

Elemental, united in vision
of present and future,
the pure line, whose innocence
denies inhibitions.

At confluence, of planes, the angle:
man loses man, loses vision;

so comes John the Baptist
with bowl of salt water
preaching the gambit:
life without sin, without

life; which accepted,
way leads downward
down orthocenter
avoiding decisions.

{2 A half-serious half-comical primary school teacher
of the late thirties.}

Or forms fourth angle -
duty, obligation:

square yields the moron,
fanatics and priests and popes,
organizing secretaries and
party managers; better still,

the rhombus - brothers and deacons,
liberal politicians,
selfish selfseekers - all who are good
doing nothing at all;

the quadrangle, the rest, me and you . . .

Mystery, which barring
the errors of the rendering
witnesseth
red-hot blade on right breast
the scar of the crucifix.

and the hand fell with Haragin,{3}
Kepkanly that wielded the blade;

with Haragin with God's light between them:

but the solitude within me remembers Kepkanly ...

{3 Kepkanly was reported to have died from excess of joy when he
received arrears of salary awarded by the haragin Commission of
1945.}


AND THIS from Jadum,{4}

(Say if thou knowest
from smell of the incense
a village where liveth
in heart of the grassland
a minstrel who singeth)

to shepherds, with a lute on his lip:

Do not wander in speargrass,
After the lights,
Probing lairs in stockings,
To roast
The viper alive, with dog lying
Upsidedown in the crooked passage ...

Do not listen at keyholes,
After the lights,
To smell from other rooms,
After the lights -

Singeth Jadum from Rockland,
after the lights.

And there are here
the errors of the rendering ...

{4 A half-demented village minstrel}


AND THIS from Upandru:{5}

Screen your bedchamber thoughts
with sun-glasses,
who could jump your eye,
your mind-window,

And I said:
The prophet only the poet.
And he said: Logistics.
(Which is what poetry is) ...

And he said to the ram: Disarm.
And I said:
Except by rooting,
who could pluck yam tubers from their base?

And there are here
the errors of the rendering ...


{5 A village explainer}


{III Watermaid}

EYE OPEN on the sea,
eyes open, of the prodigal;
upward to heaven shoot
where stars will fall from.

Secret I have told into no ear,
save into a dughole, to hold, not to drown with -
Secret I have planted into beachsand

now breaks
salt-white surf on the stones and me,
and lobsters and shells
in iodine smell -
maid of the salt-emptiness,
sophisticreamy,

whose secret I have covered up with beachsand ...

Shadow of rain over sunbeaten beach,
Shadow of rain over man with woman.

BRIGHT
with the armpit-dazzle of a lioness,
she answers,

wearing white light about her;

and the waves escort her,
my lioness,
crowned with moonlight.

So brief her presence -
match-flare in wind's breath -
so brief with mirrors around me.

Downward ...
the waves distil her;
gold crop
sinking ungathered.

Watermaid of the salt-emptiness,
grown are the ears of the secret.

AND I WHO am here abandoned,

count the sand by wavelash abandoned,
count her blessing, my white queen.

But the spent sea reflects
from his mirrored visage
not my queen, a broken shadow.

So I who count in my island the moments,
count the hour which will bring

my lost queen with angels' ash in the wind.


THE STARS have departed,
the sky in monocle
surveys the worldunder.

The stars have departed,
and I - where am I?

Stretch, stretch, O antennae,
to clutch at this hour,

fu1filling each moment in a
broken monody.


{IV: Lustra}

SO WOULD I to the hills again
so would I
to where springs the fountain
there to draw from

And to hill top clamber
body and soul
whitewashed in the moondew
there to see from

So would I from my eye the mist
so would I
thro' moonmist to hilltop
there for the cleansing

Here is a new laid egg
here a white hen at midterm.

THE FLOWER weeps, unbruised,
for him who was silenced
whose advent dumb-bells celebrate
in dim light with wine song:

Messiah will come again
After the argument in heaven
Messiah will come again ...

Fingers of penitence bring
to a palm grove
vegetable offering with five
fingers of chalk ...

THUNDERING drums and cannons
in palm grove:
the spirit is in ascent.

I have visited;
on palm beam imprinted
my pentagon -

I have visited, the prodigal ...

In palm grove,
long-drums and cannons:
the spirit in the ascent.


{V Newcomer}


TIME for worship -

softly sing the bells of exile,
the angelus,
softly sings my guardian angel.

Mask over my face -

my own mask, not ancestral - I sign:
remembrance of calvary,
and of age of innocence, which is of ...

Time for worship:

Anna of the panel oblongs,
protect me
from them fucking angels;
protect me
my sandhouse and bones.

{For Georgette}

IN THE CHILL breath of the days waking,
comes the newcomer,

when the draper of May
has sold out fine green garments,

and the hillsides have made up their faces,
and the gardens, on their faces a painted smile:

such synthetic welcome at the cock's third siren;
when from behind the bulrushes

waking, in the teeth of the chilI May morn,
comes the newcomer.

I AM standing above the noontide,
Above the bridgehead;

Listening to the laughter of waters
that do not know why:

Listening to incense -

I am standing above the noontide
with my head above it;

Under my feet float the waters
Tide blows them under ...



{Limits in Collected Poems 86}
{Limits I-IV: Siren Limits}
{Limits I-IV:} Siren Limits


{I}

SUDDENLY becoming talkative
like weaverbird.
Summoned at offiide of
dream remembered

Between sleep and waking,
I hang up my egg-shells
To you of palm grove,
Upon whose bamboo towers

Hang, dripping with yesterupwine,
A tiger mask and nude spear ...

Queen of the damp half light,
I have had my cleansing,
Emigrant with air-borne nose,
The he-goat-on-heat.


{II}

FOR HE WAS a shrub among the poplars,
Needing more roots
More sap to grow to sunlight,
Thirsting for sunlight,

A low growth among the forest.

Into the soul
The selves extended their branches,
Into the moments of each living hour,
Feeling for audience

Straining thin among the echoes;

And out of the solitude
Voice and soul with selves unite,
Riding the echoes,

Horsemen of the apocalypse;

And crowned with one self
The name displays its foliage,
Hanging low

A green cloud above the forest.


{III}

BANKS of reed.
Mountains of broken bottles.

& the mortar is not yet dry ...

Silent the footfall,
Soft as cat's paw,
SandaRed in velvet in fur,

So we must go, eve-mist on shoulders,
Sun's dust of combat
With brand burning out at hand-end.

& the mortar is not yet dry ...

Then we must sing, tongue-tied,
Without name or audience,
Making harmony among the branches.

And this is the crisis point,
The twilight moment between
sleep and waking;
And voice that is reborn transpires,
Not thro' pores in the flesh,
but the soul's back-bone.

Hurry on down -
Thro' the high-arched gate -
Hurry on down
little stream to the lake;

Hurry on down -
Thro' the cinder market -
Hurry on down
in the wake of the dream;

Hurry on down -
To rockpoint of Cable,{1}

To pull by the rope
the big white elephant ...

& the mortar is not yet dry
& the mortar is not yet dry;

And the dream wakes
the voice fades
In the damp half light
like a shadow,

Not leaving a mark.


{1 Cable Point at Asaba, a sacred waterfront with rocky
promontory, and terminal point of a traditional quinquennial
pilgrimage.}



{IV}

AN IMAGE insists
From flag pole of the heart;
Her image distracts
With the cruelty of the rose ...

Oblong-headed lioness -
No shield is proof against her -
Wound me, O sea-weed
Face, blinded like strong-room -

Distances of her armpit-fragrance
Turn chloroform enough for my patience -

When you have finished
& done up my stitches,
Wake me near the altar,
& this poem will be finished ...


{Limits V-XII:} Fragments out of the Deluge
{Fragments out of the Deluge}
{V}

ON AN empty sarcophagus
hewn out of alabaster,
A branch of fennel on an
empty sarcophagus{1}...

Nothing suggests accident
where the beast{2}
Is finishing her rest ...

Smoke of ultramarine and amber
Floats above the fields after
Moonlit rains, from tree unto tree
Distils the radiance of a king{3} ...
You might as well see the new branch of Enkidu;{4}
And that is no new thing either ...

{1 The body of one of the Egyptian Pharaohs is said to have
metamorphosed into a fennel branch.
2 The lioness of LIMITS IV who destroyed the hero's second self.
3 The hero is like Gilgamesh, legendary king of Uruk in Mesopotamia, and first human hero in
literature.
4 Companion and second self of Gilgamesh.}


{VI}

HE STOOD in the midst of them all
and appeared in true form,
He found them drunken, he found none
thirsty among them.

Who would add to your statue,
Or in your village accept you?

He fed them on seed wrapped in wonders;
They deemed it a truth-value system,
Man out of innocence,
And there was none thirsty among them.

They cast him in mould of iron,
And asked him to do a rock-drill -
Man out of innocence -
He drilled with dumb-bells about him.

And they took the key off
And they hid the key of...
That none may enter.

And they took the hot spoils of the battle,
And they shared the hot spoils among them:

Estates, among them;
And they were the chosen,
mongrel breeds,
With slogan in hand, of
won divination ...

And you talk of the people:
There is none thirsty among them.


{VIII}

AND FR0M frame of iron,
And in mould of iron ...

For he ate the dead lion,
& was within the corpse -

Which is not the point;
And who says it matters
Which way the kite flows,
Provided the movement is
Around the burning market -

And lilies
Sprouted from rosebeds,
Canalilies,
Like tombstones from pavements;

And to the cross in the void came pilgrims;
Came, floating with burnt-out tapers;

Past the village orchard where
Flannagan{1}
Preached the Pope's message,
To where drowning nuns suspired,
Asking the key-word from stone;
& he said:

To sow the fireseed among grasses,
& lo, to keep it till it burns out ...


{1 A well-known high priest of the 1940's.}

{VIII}

BUT THE sunbird repeats
Over the oilbean shadows:

"A fleet of eagles,
over the oilbean shadows,
Holds the square
under curse of their breath.

Beaks of bronze, wings
of hard-tanned felt,
The eagles flow
over man-mountains,
Steep walls of voices,
horizons;
The eagles furrow
dazzling over the voices
With wings like
combs in the wind's hair

Out of the solitude, the fleet,
out of the solitude,
Intangible like silk thread of sunlight,
The eagles ride low,
Resplendent ... resplendent;
And small birds sing in shadows,
Wobbling under their bones. .'

{IX}

AND, squatting,
A blind dog{1} howls at his godmother:

Eunice{2} at the passageway,
Singing the moon to sleep over the hills,
Eunice at the passageway ...

Give him no chair, they say,
The dawn's charioteer,
Riding with the angry stars
Toward the great sunshine.


{1 Known for his power of prophecy.
2 My childhood nurse known for her lyricism.}


{X}

AND TO us they came -
Malisons, malisons, mair than ten -
And climbed the bombax
And killed the Sunbird.

And they scanned the forest of oilbean,
Its approach; surveyed its high branches ...

And they entered into the forest,
And they passed through the forest of oilbean.
And found them, the twin-gods of the forest{1} ...

And the beasts broke -
Malisons, malisons, mair than ten -
And dawn-gust grumbled,
Fanning the grove
Like a horse-tail-man,
Like handmaid of dancers,
Fanning their branches.

Their talons they drew out of their scabbard,
Upon the tree trunks, as if on fire-clay,
Their beaks they sharpened;
And spread like eagles their felt-wings,
And descended upon the twin gods of Irkalla {2}

And the ornaments of him,
And the beads about his tail;
And the carapace of her,
And her shell, they divided.


{1 The tortoise and the python.
2 In Sumerian myth, queen of the underworld.}


{XI}

AND THE gods lie in state
And the gods lie in state
Without the long-drum.

And the gods lie unsung,
Veiled only with mould,
Behind the shrinehouse.

Gods grow out,
Abandoned;
And so do they ...


{XII}

BUT AT THE window, outside, a shadow:

The sunbird sings again
From the LIMITS of the dream;
The Sunbird sings again
Where the caress does not reach

of Guernica,{1}
on whose canvas of blood,
The slits of his tongue
cling to glue ...

& the cancelling out is complete.


{1 A work by Picasso.}





{Dance of the Painted Maidens in Collected Poems 86}
Dance of the Painted Maidnes
{DANCE OF THE PAINTED MAIDENS}

{I}

AFTER SHE had set sail after she had set sail
After the mother-of-the-earth had set sail

After the earth-mother on her homeward journey,

The fires at the rear of her the fires at the end
The flaming rainbow behind her like a wolf she devours;

Like a manatee strikes down the waters of the beginning

The going the gone-waters the back-swirling eddies
The waves in battle ahead of her in the attacking storm . . .


{II}
AND THEY came to us after she had set sail
bringing to us the secret;
And they came bringing to us the secret on
broken clay tablet cooled . . .

From the seven quarters of the globe,
Past the seven seas past the seven

Distant deserts, bearing beads of coral and
kolanuts fir for a queen,
They came bringing to us the secret by Man-
of-Giant-Testicles coded . . .


The gatekeepers at the seven gates heard them,
trembled at their approach;
The onlookers marvelled at their standards,
and at their plumed helmets . . .

And they surged round about us and round
about the clearing,
Round about us like a fence of thorns raised
against the onlookers . . .


{III}

FOR IT IS you, shower of rain after drought,
that we have waited
Menses after menses, without antimony without
bracelets; while you swam
Diver of centuries, your longest journey, the sea
of ten thousand leagues . . .

And in your honour, Princess-ou-of-exile, the tamarinds
spread their velvet coverlets,
And our cymbals our calabashed comb the night for the
alligator hidden in the rushes.

In reverence to your shores, O abyss of wonders,
our fingers
Tremble above the altar, and the incense smokes
in the censer;
And eyes of us that have looked on oceans tremble
before your lagoon . . .


{IV}

FOR YOU return to us
From a forgotten farewell
From the settled abyss
Where the twilights cross

Several seasons ago
We brought you camwood
Votaries of an ideal
Without age or name

We fed like prayers
Into your memory
Vegetable offerings
Eggs of white hens

Yesterday was Remembrance
Day at the cathedral
We called you to witness
Involved you in our vows

We did not know you
Who were whom we hold
For to know you was
To know the infinite

Today on your homecoming
Patient mother
With you in our palm
The life hour is our cup
The secret the clay
All the world's farewells
Break behind us
Like wavelash on sandbank.




{Lament of the Masks in Collected Poems 86}
Lament of the Masks
{LAMENT OF THE MASKS}

{(For W. B. Yeats)}

For the time has come O poet,
To descant your praise-names . . .

{I}

AT THE BEND of the road,
The last bend before the broken teeth of river:

And the rumour awakens
Like smell of wet earth after rain,
Elephant-feathered breed,

Burgeons into clamour, mounts up, caparisoned,
Charges to the assault,

And in cold and blue
Of iron-mask, envelopes the haven in which
Catechumens rehearse,

Like snails on athills, whispered canticles:

Warped voices
For we answer the cannon
From far off

And from throats of iron
In bird-masks
Unlike accusing tones that issue forth javelins -
Bring, O poet,

Panegyrics for the arch-priest of the sanctuary . . .


{II}
Waggoner of the great Dawn
For it is forbidden to mention your name -

How many beacon flames
Can ever challenge the sun?

Water of baptism,
Ladder to the ethereal ivory tower -

Ten thousand rivers
Can never challenge the sea.

Thunder above the earth,
Sacrifice too huge for the vulture -

Twenty thousand cannons
Must still do homage to your breath.

Hunter of elephants,
Earth tremor upon the land -

For the time has come, O Poet,
To descant your praise-names


{III}

THEY THOUGHT you would stop pursuing the white elephant
They thought you would stop pursuing the white elephant
But you pursued the white elephant without turning back -
You who chained the white elephant with your magic flue
You who trapped the white elephant like a common rabbit
You who sent the white elephant trembling into your net -
And stripped him of your horns, and made them your own
You who fashioned his horns into ivory trumpets -
They put you into the eaves thatch
You split the thatch
They poured you into an iron mould
You burst the mould;

For like the dog's mouth you were never at rest,
Who, fighting a battle in front,
Mapped out, with dust-of-combat ahead of you,
The next battle field at the rear

That generations unborn
Might never taste steel -

Who converted a jungle into marble palaces
Who watered a dry valley and weeded its banks

For we had also forgotten
Your praise-names -

Who transformed a desert into green pasture
Who commanded highways to pass thro the forest -
And will remain a mountain
Even in your sleep . . .

{IV}

BUT WILL a flutist never stop to wipe his nose?
Two arms can never encircle a giant iroko.

Night breezes drum on the plantain leaf:
Let the plantain leaf take over the dance . . .

{(I am indebted to Mr. Ben Obumselu of Ibadan University English
Department for criticisms which led to improvements in phrase and
structure -- Christopher Okigbo)}




{Moonglow in Collected Poems 86}
Moonglow
{MOONGLOW}

Moonglow . . .
After the travail in gloom
moonglow . . .
Naked in her bloom:

And there engraved on the dead world,
Moonman,
bowed in shame over the beam
I see you,
hear ever your penance as you measure
cup after cup your strength,
and Time,
day after day its length.
{(Ibadan, 1960)}



{Path of Thunder: Poems Prophesying War in Collected Poems 86}
{Thunder can Break}
Thunder can Break

FANFARE of drums, wooden bells: iron chapter;
And our dividing airs are gathered home.

This day belongs to a miracle of thunder;
Iron has carried the forum
With token gestures. Thunder has spoken,
Left no signatures: broken

Barbicans alone tell one tale the winds scatter.

Mountain or tower in sight, lo, your hostages -
Iron has made, alas, masterpieces -
Statuettes of legendary heroes - iron birds
Held - fruit of flight - tight;

For barricaded in iron handiwork a miracle caged.

Bring them out we say, bring them out
Faces and hands and feet,
The stories behind the myth, the plot
Which the ritual enacts.

Thunder can break - Earth, bind me fast -
Obduracy, the disease of elephants.

{Elegy of the Wind}

WHITE LIGHT, receive me your sojourner; O milky way,
let me clasp you to my waist;
And may my muted tones of twilight
Break your iron gate, the burden of several centuries,
into twin tremulous cotyledons ...

Man of iron throat - for I will make broadcast with
eunuch-horn of seven valves -
I will follow the wind to the clearing,
And with muffled steps seemingly out of breath break
the silence the myth of her gate.

For I have lived the sappling sprung from the bed
of the old vegetation;
Have shouldered my way through a mass of ancient
nights to chlorophyll;

Or leaned upon a withered branch,
A blind beggar leaning on a porch.

I have lived the oracle dry on the cradle of a new generation...
The autocycle leans on a porch, the branch dissolves into embers,

The ashes resolve their moments
Of twin-drops of dew on a leaf:
And like motion into stillness is my divine rejoicing -
The man embodies the child
The child embodies the man; the man remembers
The song of the innocent,
Of the uncircumcised at the sight of the flaming razor -

The chief priest of the sanctuary has uttered
the enchanted words;
The bleeding phallus,
Dripping fiesh from the carnage cries out for
the medicinal leaf...

O wind, swell my sails; and may my banner run
the course of wider waters:

The child in me trembles before the high shelf
on the wall,
The man in me shrinks before the narrow neck of
a calabash;

And the chant, already all wings, follows
In its ivory circuit behind the thunder clouds,
The slick route of the feathered serpent...



{Come Thunder}
Come Thunder
NOW THAT the triumphant march has entered the last street corners,
Remember, O dancers, the thunder among the clouds ...

Now that laughter, broken in two, hangs tremulous between the teeth,
Remember, O dancers, the lightning beyond the earth ...

The smell of blood already floats in the lavender-mist of the afternoon.
The death sentence lies in ambush along the corridors of power;
And a great fearful thing already tugs at the cables of the open air,
A nebula immense and immeasurable, a night of deep waters -
An iron dream unnamed and unprintable, a path of stone.

The drowsy heads of the pods in barren farmlands witness it,
The homesteads abandoned in this century's brush fire witness it:
The myriad eyes of deserted corn cobs in burning barns witness it:
Magic birds with the miracle of lightning flash on their feathers...

The arrows of God tremble at the gates of light,
The drums of curfew pander to a dance of death;

And the secret thing in its heaving
Threatens with iron mask
The last lighted torch of the century ...


{Hurrah for Thunder}
Hurrah for Thunder

WHATEVER happened to the elephant -
Hurrah for thunder -

The elephant, tetrarch of the jungle:
With a wave of the hand
He could pull four trees to the ground;
His four mortar legs pounded the earth:
Wherever they treaded,
The grass was forbidden to be there.

Alas! the elephant has fallen -
Hurrah for thunder -

But already the hunters are talking about pumpkins:
If they share the meat let them remember thunder.

The eye that looks down will surely see the nose;
The finger that fits should be used to pick the nose.

Today - for tomorrow, today becomes yesterday:
How many million promises can ever fill a basket. . .

If I don't learn to shut my mouth I'll soon go to hell,
I, Okigbo, town-crier, together with my iron bell.


{Elegy for Slit-Drum}
Elegy for the Slit-Drum
{With rattles accompaniment}

CONDOLENCES ... from our swollen lips laden with condolences:

The mythmaker accompanies us
The rattles are here with us

condolences from our split-tongue of the slit drum condolences

one tongue full of fire
one tongue full of stone -

condolences from the twin-lips of our drum parted in condolences:

the panther has delivered a hare
the hare is beginning to leap
the panther has delivered a hare
the panther is about to pounce -

condolences already in flight under the burden of this century:

parliament has gone on leave
the members are now on bail
parliament is now on sale
the voters are lying in wait -

condolences to caress the swollen eyelids of bleeding mourners.

the cabinet has gone to hell
the timbers are now on fire
the cabinet that sold itself
ministers are now in gaol -

condolences quivering before the iron throne of a new conqueror:

the mythmaker accompanies us (the Egret had come and gone)
Okigbo accompanies us the oracle enkindles us -
the Hombill is there again (the Hornbill has had a bath)
Okigbo accompanies us the rattles enlighten us -

condolences with the miracle of sunlight on our feathers:

The General is up ... the General is up commandments ...
the General is up the General is up the General is up -

condolences from our twin-beaks and feathers of condolences:

the General is near the throne
an iron mask covers his face
the General has carried the day
the mortars are far away -

condolences to appease the fever of a wake among tumbled tombs

the elephant has fallen
the mortars have won the day
the elephant has fallen
does he deserve his fate
the elephant has fallen
can we remember the date -

Jungle tanks blast Britain's last stand -

the elephant ravages the jungle
the jungle is peopled with snakes
The snake says to the squirrel
I will swallow you
the mongoose says to the snake
I will mangle you
the elephant says to the mongoose
I will strangle you

thunder fells the trees cut a path
thunder smashes them all - condolences ...

THUNDER that has struck the elephant
the same thunder should wear a plume - condolences

a roadmaker makes a road
the road becomes a throne
can we cane him for felling a tree - condolences ...

THUNDER that has struck the elephant
the same thunder can make a bruise - condolences:

we should forget the names
we should bury the date
the dead should bury the dead - condolences:

from our bruised lips of the drum empty of condolences:

trunk of the iron tree we cry condolences when we break,
shells of the open sea we cry condolences when we shake ...


{Elegy for Alto}
Elegy for Alto

{With drum accompaniment}

AND THE HORN may now paw the air howling goodbye ...

For the Eagles are now in sight:
Shadows in the horizon -

THE ROBBERS are here in black sudden steps of showers, of caterpillars -
THE EAGLES have come again,
The eagles rain down on us -

POLITICIANS are back in giant hidden steps of howitzers, of detonators-

THE EAGLES descend on us,
Bayonets and cannons -

THE ROBBERS descend on us to strip us of our laughter, of our thunder-
THE EAGLES have chosen their game,
Taken our concubines -

POLITICIANS are here in this iron dance of mortars, of generators -

THE EAGLES are suddenly there,
New stars of iron dawn;

So let the horn paw the air howling goodbye ...

O mother mother Earth, unbind me; let this be
my last testament; let this be
The ram's hidden wish to the sword the sword's
secret prayer to the scabbard -

THE ROBBERS are back in black hidden steps of detonators -

FOR BEYOND the blare of sirened afternoons, beyond
the motorcades;
Beyond the voices and days, the echoing highways; beyond
the latescence
Of our dissonant airs; through oar curtained eyeballs,
through our shuttered sleep,
Onto our forgotten selves, onto our broken images;
beyond the barricades
Commandments and edicts, beyond the iron tables,
beyond the elephant's
Legendary patience, beyond his inviolable bronze
bust; beyond our crumbling towers -

BEYOND the iron path careering along the same beaten track -

THE GLIMPSE of a dream lies smouldering in a cave,
together with the mortally wounded birds.
Earth, unbind me; let me be the prodigal; let this be
the ram's ultimate prayer to the tether ...

AN OLD STAR departs, leaves us here on the shore
Gazing heavenward for a new star approaching;
The new star appears, foreshadows its going
Before a going and coming that goes on forever ...






{Silences I: Lament of the Silent Sisters in Collected Poems 86}
{Silences: Lament of the Silent Sisters}
Lament of the Silent Sisters
{I}


{Crier:} IS THERE ... is certainly there . . .
For as in sea-fever globules of fresh anguish
immense golden eggs empty of albumen
sink into our balcony. . .

How does one say NO in thunder . . .

For in breakers in sea-fever compass or cross
makes a difference: certainly makes
not an escape ladder . . .

Where is there for us an anchorage;
A shank for a sheet, a double arch -

{Chorus:} They comb the afternoon the scavengers
For scented shadows above the underrush -

{Crier:} The cross to us we still call to us,
In this jubilee-dance above the carrion . . .






{II}

{Chorus:} THIS SHADOW of carrion incites
and in rhythms of silence
Urges us; gathers up our broken
hidden feather-of-flight
To this anguished cry of Moloch:

What cast-iron steps cascading down the valley
all forged into thunder of tanks;
And detonators cannoned into splintered flames,
in this jubilee-dance of fireflies!

{Crier:} They struck him in the ear they struck him in the eye;
They Picked his bones for scavenging:

{Chorus:} And there will be a continual going to the well,
Until they smash their calabashes.

{Crier:} So, one dips one's tongue in ocean, and begins
To cry to the mushroom of the sky:



{III}

{Chorus:} DUMB-BELLS outside the gates
In hollow seascapes without memory, we carry
Each of us an urn of native
Earth, a double handful anciently gathered.

And by salt mouths by yellow
Sand banks sprinkled with memories, we spread
To the nightairs our silences,
Suffused in this fragrance of divers melodies:

{Crier:} This is our swan song
This is our senses' stillness:

{Chorus:} We carry in our worlds that flourish
Our worlds that have failed . . .

{Crier:} This is our swan song
This is the sigh of our spirits:

{Chorus:} Unseen shadows like long-fingered winds
Pluck from our strings
This shriek, the music of the firmament . . .

{IV Alternatively}

{Crier: Chorus:} I see many colours in the salt teeth of foam

Which is no where to face under the half-light

The rainbow they say is full of harmonies

We shall make a grey turn to face it.

Wild winds cry out against us

We shall swallow our heart in our stomach

More wrinkles on the salt face of glass

The winds' broom sweeps only the surface.

I hear many voices about us

We shall wear the green habit of kolanuts

The kingfisher gathers his ropes in the distance

The salt water gathers them inward

The dipping paddle blades, the inconstant dolphins

The salt water gathers them inward

Will the water gather us in her sibylline chamber?

And our silences fade into galloping antelopes?


{V Alternatively}

{Crier: Chorus:}

YELLOW images:
Voices in the senses' stillness

Pointed arches:
Pieces in the form of a pear . . .

Angles, filaments:
Hosts of harlequins in the shadows:

And bearded Judas,
Resplendent among the dancers . . .

I hear sounds as, they say,
A worshipper hears the flutes -

The music sounds so in the soul
It can hear nothing else -

I hear painted harmonies
From the mushroom of the sky -

Silences are melodies
Heard in retrospect:

And how does one say NO in thunder?


One dips one's tongue in the ocean;
Camps with the choir of inconstant
Dolphins, by shallow sand banks
Sprinkled with memories;
Extends one's branches of coral,
The branches extends in the senses'
Silence; this silence distills
in yellow melodies.



{On the New Year in Collected Poems 86}
{ON THE NEW YEAR}
ON THE NEW YEAR
{I}

Now it is over, the midnight funeral that parts
The old year from the new;
And now beneath each pew
The warden dives to find forgotten missals
Scraps of resolutions and medals;
And over lost souls in the graves
Amid the tangled leaves
The Wagtail is singing:
Cheep cheep cheep the new year is coming;
Christ will come again, the churchbell is tinging
Christ will come again after the argument in heaven
Christ . . . Nichodemus . . . Magdalen . . .
Ding dong ding . . . . . .

And the age rolls on like a wind glassed flood,
And the pilgrimage to the cross is the void . . .

And into time time slips with a lazy pace
And time into time
And need we wait while time and the hour
Roll, waiting for power?

{II}
To wait is to linger
With the hope that the flood will flow dry;
To hope is to point an expectant finger
At fate, fate that has long left us to lie
Marooned on the sands
Left with dry glands
To suckle as die.

Wait indeed, wait with grief laden
Hearts that throb like a diesel engine.
Throbbing with hopes:
Those hopes of men those hopes that are nowhere,
Those nebulous hopes, sand castles in the air -

Wait and hope?
The way is weary and long and time is
Fast on our heels;
Or forces life to a headlong conclusion
Nor yet like crafty Heracles
Devolve on someone else
The bulk of the globe?

{III}

Where then are the roots, where the solution
To life's equation?

The roots are nowhere
There are no roots here
Probe if you may
From now until doomsday.
We have to think of ourselves as forever
Soaring and sinking like dead leaves blown by a gust
Floating choicelessly to the place where
Old desires and new born hopes like bubbles burst
Into nothing - blown to the place of fear
To the cross in the void;
Or else forever playing this zero-sum game
With fate as mate, and forever
Slaying and mating as one by one
Our tombstones rise in the void..
{(1958)}



{Heavensgate (Mbari ed., 1962)}
{Heavensgate}
Heavensgate

IDOTO


BEFORE you, mother Idoto,
naked I stand,
before your watery presence,
a prodigal,

leaning on an oilbean;
lost in your legend...

Under your power wait I on barefoot,
Watchman for the watchword at
HEAVENSGATE;

out of the depths my cry
give ear and hearken.


{I.Passage}
Passage
{(i)}

DARK waters of the beginning.

Rays, violet and short
piercing the gloom,
foreshadow the fire that is dreamed of.

On far side a rainbow
arched like boa bent to kill
foreshadows the rain that is dreamed of.

Me to the orangery
solitude invites,
a wagtail, to tell
the tangled-wood-tale;
a sunbird, to mourn
a mother on a spray.

Rain and sun in single combat;
on one leg standing
in silence at the passage

the young bird at the passage.


{(ii)}

Bird of the sun on tree top sitting
on fig tree top mourns under the lamp:

etru bo pi alo a she e anando we aquandem...

And when we were great boys
hiding at the smithies
we sang words after the bird-


kratosbiate...


And we would respond,
great boys of child-innocence,
and in the flames burn
white buck and helmet
that had pulled us thro innocence...


ebili malo, ebili com com, ebili te que liquandem...


still sings the sunbird
under the lamp,
stale song the dumb bell
loud to me.



{(iii)}

SILENT faces at crossroads:
festivity in black...

Faces of black like long black
column of ants

behind the bell tower,

into the hot garden where
all roads meet:

festivity in black....

Oh Anna at the knobs
of the panel oblongs,
hear me at crossroads
at the great hinges

where the players of loft pipe-
organs rehearse old lovely

fragments, alone-

stains of pressed orange leaves
on pages,
bleach of the light of years held
in leather-

I have listened in cornfields
among the wmdplayers
I have listened to the wind leaning
over its loveliest fragment.



{(iv)}

BOOTS over deserts over seas over
seven-fingered seas,
over smell of the seventh desert
among reedy spaces...


Behind the walled gods
in market,
boots over mandos
and byelaws thereto appended
by Leidan,
archtyrant of the holy sea.


At pentecost, forgiveness
behind the idols,
at pentecost, asked for and given
newly naked
upon waters of the genesis
by Leidan,
archtyrant of the holy sea.


Paul came- it comes Achates-
whose father
answered from frame of iron;
and after

smell of rank olive oil
on foreheads,
vision of the hot bath of heaven
among reedy spaces.




{II: Initiation}
Initiation

{(i)}

SCAR of the crucifix
over the breast
by red blade inflicted
by red-hot blade on right breast

witnesseth

mystery which I initiate
received newly naked
upon waters of the genesis
from KEPKANLY:

Elemental, united in vision
of present and future,
the pure line, whose innocence
denies inhibitions.

At confluence of planes
the angle:
man loses man, loses
vision;

so comes John the Baptist
with bowl of salt water
preaching the gambit:
life without sin, without
life; which accepted,
way leads downward
down orthocenter
avoiding decisions.



Or forms fourth angle:
duty, obligation;

square yields the moron,
fanatics and priests and popes,
organising secretaries and
party managers; better still,

the rhombus - brothers and
deacons and liberal politicians and
selfish selfseekers and all
who are good doing nothing at all;

the quadrangle, the rest,
me and you...

Mystery, which barring
the errors of the rendering

witnesseth

red-hot blade on right breast
the scar of the crucifix.



{(ii)}

AND the hand fell with Haragin,
Kepkanly
that wielded the blade;
with Haragin,
with God's light between them.

O solitude within me
remember Kepkanly.



{(iii)}

JAM JAM DUM DUM...
say if thou knowest

from smell of the grassland
a village where liveth
in the heart of Aguata
a minstrel who singeth

And shepherds with a lute in their lip.

Do not wander in speargrass
after the lights,
probing lairs, in stockings,
to roast the viper alive,
with dog lying upsidedown
in the crooked passage:

Singeth jadum the minstrel,
after the lights...

Do not listen at a keyhole
after the lights,
to smell from the other rooms,
after the lights;

Singeth jadum from Rockland,
after the lights;

and there are here
the errors of the rendering



{(iv)}

AND this from upandru:

Screen your bedchamber thoughts
with sunglasses;
who could jump your eye,
your mind-window?

And I said:
The prophet only,
the poet.
And he said:
Logistics.

Which is what poetry is.

Which is what poetry is.



{(v)}

AND he said to the ram:
disarm.
And I said:
except by rooting,
who could pluck yam tubers
from their base?

And he said:
sophistics.

And there are here
the errors of the rendering.



BRIDGE

I AM standing above you and tide
above the noontide,

Listening to the laughter of waters
that do not know why:

Listening to incence...

I am standing above the noontide
with my head above it,

Under my feet float the waters:
tide blows them under.



{III: Watermaid}
Watermaid
{(i)}

EYES open on the sea,
eyes open, of the prodigal;
upward to heaven shoot
where stars will fall from.

Which secret I have told into no ear;
into a dughole to hold,
not to drown with-
Which secret I have planted into beachsand,

now breaks
salt-white surf on the stones and me,
& lobsters & shells in
iodine smell-
maid of the salt-emptiness,
sophisticreamy, native,

whose secret I have covered up with beachsand.

Shadow of rain
over sunbeaten beach,
shadow of rain
over man with woman.



{(ii)}


BRIGHT
with the armpit-dazzle of a lioness,
she answers,

wearing white light about her;

and the waves escort her,
my lioness,
crowned with moonlight.

So brief her presence-
match-flare in wind's breath-
so brief with mirrors around me.

Downward ...
the waves distil her
gold crop
sinking ungathered.

Watermaid of the salt emptiness,
grown are the ears of the secret.



{(iii)}

So I who am here abandoned,
count the sand
by wavelash abandoned,
count her blessing,
my white queen.

And the spent sea reflects
from his mirrored visage
not my queen,
a broken shadow.

So I who count in my island
the moments,
count the hour which will bring
my lost queen

with angel's ash in the wind.



{(iv)}

THE Stars have departed,
the sky in monocle
surveys the worldunder.

The stars have departed,
and I- where am I?

Stretch, stretch, O antennae,
to clutch at this hour,

fulfilling each moment in a
broken monody.




{IV: Lustra}
Lustra

{(i)}

So would I to the hills again
so would I
to where springs the fountain
there to draw from

and to hill top clamber
body and soul
whitewashed in the moondew
there to see from

So would I from my eye the mist
so would I
thro moonmist to hilltop
there for the cleansing

Here is a new laid egg
here a white hen at midterm.



{(ii)}

THUNDERING drums and cannons
in palm grove:
the spirit is in ascent.

I have visited,
on palm beam imprinted
my pentagon-

I have visited, the prodigal...

In palm grove
long drums and cannons:
the spirit in the ascent.



{(iii)}

AND the flower weeps
unbruised,
Lacrimae Christi,

for him who was silenced;

whose advent
dumb bells in the dim light celebrate
with wine song:

Messiah will come again,
After the argument in heaven;
Messiah will come again,
Lumen mundi...

Fingers of penitence
bring
to a palm grove
vegetable offering
with five
fingers of chalk.



{V: Newcomer}
Newcomer

{(i)}

TIME for worship:


softly sing the bells of exile
softly sings the angelus
unto my ears,
softly sings
my guardian angel.


Mask over my face-

my own mask
not ancestral-
I sign:
remembrance of calvary which is of
age of innocence
which is of


time for worship...


O ANNA of the panel oblongs,
protect me
from them fuckin angels,
protect me
my sandhouse and bones.



{(ii)}

{(for PETER THOMAS)}


of kindred spirits
anagnorisis and


ditto of self the prodigal...

Them and sees me
and knows me
and says nothing:

them shall eye see hereafter...

I am mad with the same madness as the
moon and my neighbour,
I am kindled from the moon and the
hearth of my neighbour.




{(iii)}

(for GEORGETTE)


IN the chill breath
of the day's waking

comes the newcomer

when the draper of May
has sold out fine green
garments, and the hillsides
have made up their faces,
and the gardens,
on their faces
a painted smile:

such synthetic welcome

at the cock's third siren
when from behind bulrushes
waking
in the teeth of the chill Maymorn

comes the newcomer.


{Transition}
TRANSISTION

DROP of dew on green bowl fostered
on leaf green bowl grows under the lamp

without flesh or colour;

under the lamp into stream of
song, streamsong,
in flight into the infinite-
a blinded heron
thrown against the infinite-
where solitude
weaves her interminable mystery
under the lamp.

The moon has now gone under the sea.
The song has now gone under the shade.




{Limits, Mbari 1964}

Limits: Siren Limits
{Acknowledgements
The author wishes to acknowledge his debt of gratitude to Louis Ekpechi who nursed him
through a most anxious period of illness; to Ulli Beier who rescued this manuscript; and to
Sunday Anozie to whom this poem owes much more for its present form than can adequately be
expressed.}


{I}
SUDDENLY becoming talkative
like a weaverbird
Summoned at offside of
dream remembered

Between sleep and waking,

I hang up my egg-shells
To you of palm grove,
Upon whose bamboo towers hang
Dripping with yesterupwine

A tiger mask and nude spear...

Queen of the damp half light,
I have had my cleansing,
Emigrant with the air-borne nose,
The he-goat-on-heat.


{II}

FOR HE WAS a shrub among the poplars
Needing more roots
More sap to grow to sunlight
Thirsting for sunlight

A low growth among the forest.

Into the soul
The selves extended their branches
Into the moments of each living hour
Feeling for audience

Straining thin among the echoes;

And out of the solitude
Voice and soul with selves unite
Riding the echoes

Horsemen of the apocalypse

And crowned with one self
The name displays its foliage,
Hanging low

A green cloud above the forest.

{III}

BANKS of reed.
Mountains of broken bottles.

& the mortar is not yet dry...

Silent the footfall
soft as cat's paw,
Sandalled in velvet,
in fur
So we must go,
Wearing evenmist against the shoulders,
Trailing sun's dust saw dust of combat,
With brand burning out at hand-end.

& the mortar is not yet dry...

Then we must sing
Tongue-tied without name or audience,
Making harmony among the branches.

And this is the crisis point,
The twilight moment between
sleep and waking;
And voice that is reborn transpires
Not thro' the pores in the flesh
but the souls's backbone.

Hurry on down -
Thro the high-arched gate -
Hurry on down
like stream to the lake;
Hurry on down -
Thro the cinder market -
Hurry on down
in the wake of the dream;
Hurry on down -
To rockpoint of CABLE
To pull by the rope
The big white elephant ...

& the mortar is not yet dry
& the mortar is not yet dry ...

and the dream wakes
and the voice fades
in the damp half light,
like a shadow,

Not leaving a mark.

{IV}

AN IMAGE insists
from the flag pole of the heart,
The image distracts
with the cruelty of the rose ...

My lioness
(No shield is lead plate against you)
Wound me with your sea-weed face,
blinded like a strong-room.

Distances of your
armpit-fragrance
Turn to chloroform,
enough for my patience -

When you have finished,
and done up my stitches,
Wake me near the altar,

& this poem will be finished.



{Frangments out of the Deluge V}
Limits: Fragments out of the Deluge
{V}

UPON an empty sarcophagus
out of solid alabaster,
A branch of giant fennel,
on an empty sarcophagus ...

Nothing suggests accident
where the beasts
Are finishing their rest:

Smoke of ultramarine and amber
Floating above the fields after
moonlit rains
From tree unto tree distils
the radiance of a king ...

You might as well see the new branch
in ENKI;
And that is no new thing either...


{VI}

HE STOOD in the midst of them all
and appeared in true form,
He found them drunken, he found none
thirsty among them.

Who would add to your statue,
Or in your village accept you?

He fed them on seed wrapped in wonders,
And deeded it a truth-value system,
Man out of innocence,
And there was none thirsty among them.

Dots and brackets,
The model is not far off ...

They cast him in mould of iron,
And asked him to do a rock-drill:
Man out of innocence -
He drilled with dumb bells about him.

And they took the key off
And they took the key of ...
that none may enter.

And they took the hot spoils off the battle,
And they shared the hot spoils among them:
Estates among them;

And they were the chosen
mongrel breeds,
With slogan in hand, of
won divination ...

And you talk of the people,
And there is none thirsty among them.


{VII}

AND FROM frame of iron
came HE,
In mould of iron...

and he ate the dead lion,
and was within the corpse...

which is not the point;
And who says it matters
which way the kite flows,
Provided movement is around
the burning market,
The centre -

So lilies
Sprouted from rosebuds,
canalilies,
Like tombstones from pavements;
And to the cross in the void
came pilgrims,
Came floating with burnt-out tapers:

Past the village orchard
where FLANNAGAN
Preached the Pope's message,
To where drowning nuns suspired,
Asking the KEY-WORD from stone,

and he said:
To sow the fireseed among grasses,
and lo,
To keep it till it burns out ...


{VIII}

BUT the Sunbird -
Listen under the oilbean shadows -
Repeats, repeats,
over the oilbean shadows ...

'A fleet of eagles
' over the oilbean shadows
'Holds the square
' under curse of their rank breath.

'Beaks of bronze, wings of
hard-tanned felt,
'The eagles flow
over man mountains,
'Steep walls of voices,
horizons;
'The eagles furrow
dazzling over the voices
'With wings like
combs in the wind's air
'Out of the solitude,
'The fleet,
' out of the solitude,
'Intangible
' like the silk thread of the sunlight,
The eagles ride low,
' resplendent ... resplendent ...'

And small birds sing in shadows,
Wobbling under their bones.

So squatting,
A blind dog howls at his godmother -

YUNICE at the passageway,
Singing the moon to sleep over the hills,
YUNICE at the passageway -

Give him no chair, they say,
The crier of the dawn,
Riding with gods and the angry stars
Toward the great sunshine.


{IX}

AND TO US they came -
(Malisons, malisons, mair than ten)
And climbed the bombax
and killed the Sunbird.
And they scanned the forest of oilbean,
its approach,
Surveyed its high branches...

And they entered into the forest,
And they passed through the forest,
oil oilbean,
And found them,
the twin-gods of the forest:

The grove was damp with airs, with airs
the leaves,
And morndew beckoned, beckoned afar
from the oilbean trees,
From the branches of the gods of IRKALLA.

Within it -
within me -

Not a stir,
not a dead leaf whispered,
Splitting the dawnlit silence;
Not the still breath of the gods of IRKALLA.

Then the beasts broke -
(Malisons, malisons, mair than ten)
And dawn-gust grumbled,
fanning the grove
Like a horse-tail-man,
like the handmaid of dancers,
Fanning their trembling branches.

Their talons,
they drew out of their scabbard,
Upon the tree trunk,
as if on fire-clay,
Their beaks they sharpened,
And spread like eagles their felt-wings,
and descended,
Descended upon the twin-gods of IRKALLA.

And the ornaments of him,
And the beads about his tail:
And the carapace of her,
And her shell,
they divided.

And the gods lie in state
And the gods lie in state
without the long-drum.

And the gods lie unsung
And the gods lie
veiled only with mould,
Behind the shrinehouse.

Gods grow out,
abandoned;
And so do they ...


{X}

BUT at the window
Outside
at the window,
A shadow -

Listen. Listen again under the shadow ...
Give me a spooknif, and shave my long beard ...

The Sunbird sings again
From the LIMITS of the dream,
The Sunbird sings again
Where the caress does not reach,

of Guernica,
On whose canvas of blood,
The newsprint-slits of his tongue
cling to glue ...

& the cancelling out is complete.



{Limits I-IV in Transistion 1962}
Siren


SIREN

(& the mortar is not yet dry...)
{I}

SUDDENLY becoming talkative
like weaverbird
Summoned at offside of
dream remembered
Between sleep and waking,
I hang-up my egg-shells
To you of palm grove,
Upon whose bamboo towers hang
Dripping with yesterupwine

A tiger mask and nude spear...

Queen of the damp half light,
I have had my cleansing,
Emigrant with air-borne nose,
The he-goat-on-heat.

{II}
FOR HE WAS a shrub among the poplars
Needing more roots
More sap to grow to sunlight
Thirsting for sunlight

A low growth among the forest.

Into the soul
The selves extend their branches
Into the moments of each living hour
Feeling for audience

Straining thin among the echoes;

And out of the solitude
Voice and soul with selves unite
Riding the echoes

Horseman of the apocalypse

And crowned with one self
The name displays its foliage,
Hanging low

A green cloud above the forest.

{III}
BANKS of reed.
Mountains of broken bottles.

& the mortar is not yet dry...

Silent the footfall
Soft as cat's paw,
Sandalled in velvet,
in fur
So we must go,
Wearing evemist against the shoulders,
Trailing sun's dust saw dust of combat,
With brand burning out at hand-end.

& the mortar is not yet dry...

Then we must sing
Tongue-without name or audience,
Making harmony among the branches.

And this is the crisis point,
The twilight moment between
sleep and waking;
And voice that is reborn transpires
Not thro' pores in the flesh
but the soul's back-bone
Hurry on down
thro' the high-arched gate -
Hurry on down
little stream to the lake;
Hurry on down -
Thro' the cinder market
Hurry on down
in the wake of the dream;
Hurry on down -
To rockpoint of CABLE
To pull by the rope
The big white elephant ...

& the mortar is not yet dry
& the mortar is not yet dry...

& the dream wakes
& the voice fades
In the damp half light,
Like a shadow,
Not leaving a mark.

{IV}
An image insists
from the flag-pole of the heart
The image distracts
with the cruelty of the rose...

My lioness,
(No shield is lead plate against you)
Wound me with your sea-weed face,
Blinded like a strong-room.
Distances of your
armpit-fragrance
Turn chloroform,
enough for my patience -
When you have finished,
& done up my stitches,
Wake me near the altar,

& this poem will be finished.







{Limits V-X in TRANSITION 1962}
Fragments out of the Deluge
{Fragements out of the Deluge}

{V}
UPON an empty sarcophagus
out of solid alabaster,
A branch of giant fennel,
on an empty sarcophagus...

Nothing suggests accident
where the beasts
Are finishing their rest:

Smoke of ultramarine and amber
Floating above the fields after
moonlit rains
From tree unto tree distils
the radiance of a king...

You might as well see the new branch
in ENKI;
And that is no new thing either...


{VI}
HE STOOD in the midst of them all
and appeared in true form,
He found them drunken, he found none
thirsty among them.
Who would add to your statue,
Or in your village accept you?

He fed them on seed wrapped in wonders,
And deemed it a truth-value system,
Man out of innocence,
And there was none thirsty among them.

Dots & brackets,
The model is not far off .

They cast him in mould of iron,
And asked him to do a rock-drill:
Man out of innocence -
He drilled with dumb bells about him.

And they took the key off
And they hid the key of...
that none may enter.

And they took the hot spoils off the battle,
And they shared the hot spoils among them:
Estates among them;

And they were the chosen
mongrel breeds,
With slogan in hand, of
won divination...
And you talk of the people,
And there is none thirsty among them.


{VII}
AND FROM frame of iron
came He
In mould of iron...

& he ate the dead lion,
& was within the corpse -
which is not the point;

And who says it matters
which way the kite flows,
Provided movement is around
The burning market,
The centre -
And lilies
Sprouted from rosebeds,
Canalilies,
Like tombstones from pavements,
And to the cross in the void
came pilgrims,
Came floating with burnt-out tapers:

Past the village orchard
where FLANNAGAN
Preached the Pope's message
To where drowning nuns suspired,
Asking the KEY-WORD from stone,
& he said:
To sow the fireseed among grasses,
& lo,
To keep it till it burns out...

{VIII}
BUT the sunbird -
Listen under the oilbean shadows -
Repeats, repeats,
over the oilbean shadows...

{‘}A fleet of eagles
{‘} over the oilbean shadows
{‘} Holds the square
{‘} under the curse of their rank breath.

{‘}Beaks of bronze, wings of
{‘} hard-tanned felt,
{‘}The eagles flow
{‘} over man mountains,
{‘}Steep walls of voices,
{‘} horizons;
{‘}The eagles furrow
{‘} dazzling over the voices
{‘}With wings like
{‘} combs in the wind's hair.

{‘} Out of solitude,
{‘}The fleet
{‘} out of solitude,
{‘}Intangible
{‘} like the silk thread of the sunlight,
{‘}The eagles ride low,
{‘} resplendent...resplendent...'

And small birds sing in shadows,
Wobbling under their bones.
And from the edge of the square,
A blind dog squatting, howls at his godmother -

YUNICE at the passageway,
Singing the moon to sleep over the hills,
YUNICE at the passageway -

Give him no chair they say,
The crier of the dawn,
Riding with gods and the angry stars
Toward the great sunshine.

{IX}
AND TO US they came -
(Malisons, malisons, mair than ten)
And climbed the bombax
& killed the Sunbird.
And they scanned the forest of oilbean,
its approach,
Surveyed its high branches...

And they entered into the forest,
And they passed through the forest,
of oilbean,
And found them,
The twin-gods of the forest:

The grove was damp with airs, with airs,
the leaves,
And morndew beckoned, beckoned afar,
from the oilbean trees,
From the branches of the gods of IRKALLA.

Within it -
with me -
Not a stir,
not a dead leaf whispered,
Splitting the dawnlit silence;
Not the still breath of the gods of IRKALLA.
Then the beasts broke -
(Malisons, malisons, mair than ten)
And dawn-gust grumbled,
fanning the grove
Like a horse-tail-man,
like the handmaid of dancers,
Fanning their trembling branches.

Their talons,
they drew out of the scabbard,
Upon the tree trunks,
as if on fire-clay,
Their beaks they sharpened,
And spread like eagles their felt-wings,
and descended,
Descended upon the twin-gods of IRKALLA.

And the ornaments of him,
And the beads about his tail;
And the carapace of her,
And her shell,
They divided.

And the gods lie in state
And the gods lie in state
without the long-drum.

And the gods lie unsung
And the gods lie
veiled only with mould,
Behind the shrinehouse.

Gods grow out,
Abandoned;
And so do they...


{X}
BUT at the window,
Outside
at the window,
A shadow -
Listen. Listen again under the shadow...
Give me a spooknif; & shave my long beard...
The Sunbird sings again
Where the caress does not reach,

of Guernica
On whose canvas of blood,
The newsprint-slits of his tongue
cling to glue...
& the cancelling out is complete.




{Silences}
{Lament of the Silent Sisters}




{"}Et, force du silence et des noires ténèbres
Tout rentre également en l'ancien passé,
Fatidique, vaincu, monotone, lassé.
Comme leau des bassin anciens se résigne{."}
- MALLARMÉ Hérodiade

{ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author wishes to acknowledge his debt to those
composers whose themes he used or varied in
certain parts of the present work. The INTROIT is
a variation on a theme in Raja Ratnam's At Eight-
fifteen in the Morning; the first three passages of the
first movement are variations on a theme by
Malcolm Cowley; "Sand banks sprinkled with
memories" in the 4th passage of the same movement
is a variation on Stephane Mallarmé's "au bosquet
arrose d'accords" in his L'Après-midi d'un Faune;
the 6th passage of the same movement is a variation
on a theme in Rabindranath Tagore's Stray Birds.

Ibadan, December, 1962}


{Introit}

So one dips one's pen in the ocean,
and begins
to write on the mushroom of the sky. . .

Thrice they struck him on the eye,
three times on the ear,

and spilt his blood as at a slaughter.
And there was a continual going to the well,
until they smashed their calabashes. . .

{(i) Silent Sisters. Chorus}

We are the dumb bells
We are the dumb bells
Outside the gates
In hollow landscapes

Without memory we carry

Each of us an
Urn of native
Soil, of not
Impalpable dust.

Here by the salt mouth only, by yellow
Sand banks sprinkled with memories

We carry

In our worlds that flourish
Our worlds that have failed.

This is our swan song
This song is the stillness of our breath.

No song is your swan song
Let every voice keep its breath.

This song is our swan song
This song is our senses' silence.

Spread to the nightairs your silences
Suffused in this fragrance of divers melodies.

This song is our swan song

Each song is the sigh of your spirits:
Unseen shadows, like long-fingered
Winds, are plucking from your strings the --
This song is the -- music of the firmament.

{(ii) Silent Sisters}

-- I see many colours in the salt-teeth of foam

--That is no where to face under the half light.

-- The rainbow they say is full of harmonies:
The sea's face is rishest.

--Wild winds cry out against us:
We shall make a grey turn to face them.

--No wrinkles on the salt face of glass:
The winds' broom sweeps only the surface.

--I hear many voices about me:
They wear the green habit of kolanu gathers them inward.


--The kingfisher gathers his ropes in the distance:
The salt water gathers them inward:

--The dipping paddle blade, the inconstant dolphins,
The salt water gathers them inward.

-- Will the water gather us?

-- Silences fade in my stomach like galloping antelopes.

-- Will the water gather us?

--As deep and profound as scented shadows,
Silences are loud like mountain waterfalls.

--Will the water gather us. . .
Gather us . . . gather us . . .


{(iii) Chorus}

Is there certainly there this sound of the fury,
and we camp in a convent in the open. . .

And how does one say no in thunder?
over the head a tarpauline?

That makes a difference, makes no wall or
brick partition.

What makes a difference makes two rooms and a doorway
-- a hole-for-a-loop, an action at a lawcourt:

Here kites get caught in, certainly get caught in
unless they slip through the doorway
with an attorney.

So how does one say no in thunder?

And we camp here . . . there in the open . . .


{(iv) Silent Sisters. Chorus}

Yellow images.
Voices in the senses' stillness.

Pointed arches.
Pieces in the form of a pear.

We see angles, filaments,
A host of harlequins under the shadows;

And bearded Judas,
Resplendent among the dancers.

We hear sounds as, they say,
A worshipper hears the flutes;

This music sounds so in the soul
It can hear nothing else.

We hear painted harmonies
From the mushroom of the sky --

Silences are melodies
Heard in retrospect.

And how does one say no in thunder?

One dips one's tongue in the ocean;
Camps with the choir of inconstant
Dolphins, by shallow sand banks

Sprinkled with memories;

Extends one's branches of coral,
The branches extends in the senses'
Silence; this silence distils

In yellow melodies.