Yeye Oshun
Abiodun Adekoya
Pleasure of the night laid legs on my honeypot
To bring alive my unborn children from heaven
Groaning of the day deeper my soul into spirituality
Claw of
Pleasure of the night laid legs on my honeypot
To bring alive my unborn children from heaven
Groaning of the day deeper my soul into spirituality
Claw of
for Moremi, 1963
Earth will not share the rafter’s envy; dung floors
Break, not the gecko’s slight skin, but its fall
Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for
You are the one, the unbeatable of all time
When motion is still and helpless
When companions are scarce and wobble
When hope seems not to motivate and sightless
You
The iron bird, the bird of steel
who after having lacerated the clouds of morning
would want to puncture the stars
beyond the day,
retreats, as if in remorse,
into
Has there ever been
since Stephen the Great
a time of peace and stability
when forest and soil thrived
and people lived and danced
in their traditional ways.
Rival powers of
It has been called the last place on Earth
this equatorial wonderland,
land of roaring rivers and majestic mountains
beautiful, but so fragile – as a spider’s web.
Here elusive species
My apparition rose from the fall of lead,
Declared, ‘I am a civilian.’ It only served
To aggravate your fright. For how could I
Have risen, a being of this
The tune of Adowa
Drives Yaa to frenzy,
Her legs alternate–
they close,
they cross,
they open,
they part.
Oh, what a dancer,
The dancer of Adowa.
Her trunk goes–<br
Holy Father in heaven,
My parents have done enough,
But if I should think about their struggle and luckless,
It seems I should not grow old again.
They have till the
Dear land of Jesse
Upon the city of excellence and enterprise
There I heard the wailing of your children
Tremble like echo of antelope inside inferno
Shrieking voices: painful, tearful and
Blue diaphane, tobacco smoke
Serpentine on wet film and wood glaze,
Mutes chrome, wreathes velvet drapes,
Dims the cave of mirrors. Ghost fingers
Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins
Of
Tell them about an unflappable warrior
A warrior both at home and on the battlefield
The bird’s offspring on Ìrókò tree
Akalamagbo’s child with magical sight
One who walks ahead