CLARK, john Pepper

Abiku

Coming and going these several seasons,

Do stay out on the baobab tree,

Follow where you please your kindred spirits

If indoors it is not enough for you.

True, it leaks through the thatch

When floods brim the banks,

And the bats and the owls

Often tear in at night through the eaves,

And at harmattan, the bamboo walls

Are ready tinder for the fire

That dries the fresh fish up on the rack.

Still, it’s been the healthy stock

To several fingers, to many more will be

Who reach to the sun.

No longer then bestride the threshold

But step in and stay

For good. We know the knife-scars

Serrating down your back and front

Like beak of the sword-fish,

And both your ears, notched

As a bondsman to this house,

Are all relics of your first comings.

Then step in, step in and stay

For her body is tired,

Tired, her milk going sour

Where many more mouths gladden the heart.

The Casualties

The casualties are not only those who are dead.

They are well out of it.

The casualties are not only those who are dead.

Though they await burial by installment.

The casualties are not only those who are lost

Persons or property, hard as it is

To grope for a touch that some

May not know is not there.

The casualties are not only those led away by night.

The cell is a cruel place, sometimes a haven.

No where as absolute as the grave.

The casualties are not only those who started

A fire and now cannot put out. Thousands

Are are burning that have no say in the matter.

The casualties are not only those who are escaping.

The shattered shall become prisoners in

A fortress of falling walls

The casualties are many, and a good member as well

Outside the scenes of ravage and wreck;

They are the emissaries of rift,

So smug in smoke-rooms they haunt abroad,

They do not see the funeral piles

At home eating up the forests.

They are wandering minstrels who, beating on

The drums of the human heart, draw the world

Into a dance with rites it does not know.

The drums overwhelm the guns…

Caught in the clash of counter claims and charges

When not in the niche others left,

We fall.

All casualties of the war.

Because we cannot hear each other speak.

Because eyes have ceased the face from the crowd.

Because whether we know or

Do not the extent of wrongs on all sides,

We are characters now other than before

The war began, the stay-at-home unsettled

By taxes and rumours, the looters for office

And wares, fearful everyday the owners may return.

We are all casualties,

All sagging as are

The cases celebrated for kwashiorkor.

The unforseen camp-follower of not just our war.

Fulani Cattle

Contrition twines me like a snake

Each time I come upon the wake

Of your clan,

Undulating along in agony,

Your face of stool for mystery:

What secret hope or knowledge,

Locked in your hump away from man.

Imbues you with courage

So mute and fierce and wan

That, not demurring nor kicking,

You go to the house of slaughter?

Can it be in the forging

Of your gnarled and crooked horn

You’d experienced passions far stronger

Than storms which brim up the Niger?

Perhaps, the drover’s whip no more

On your balding mind and crest

Arouses shocks of ecstasy:

Or likely the drunken journey

From desert through grass and forest,

To the hungry towns by sea

Does call at least for rest-

But, will you not first reveal to me,

As true the long knife must prevail,

The patience of even your tail?

Night Rain

What time of night it is

I do not know

Except that like some fish

Doped out of the deep

I have bobbed up belly wise

From stream of sleep

And no cock crow

It is drumming hard here

And I suppose everywhere

Droning with insistent ardor upon

Our roof thatch and shed

And through sheaves slit open

To lightning and rafters

I cannot quite make out over head

Great water drops are dribbling

Falling like orange and mango

Fruits showered forth in the wind

Or perhaps I should say so

Much like beads I could in prayer tell

Then on string as they break

In wooden bowls and earthenware

Mother is busy now deploying

About our room let an floor

Although, it is so bad

I know her practiced step as

She moves her bins, bags and vats

Out of the run of water

That like ants filling out of the wood

Will scatter and gain possession

Of the floor.

Do no tremble then

But, turn brothers, turn upon your side

Of your loosening mats

To where the others lie.

We have drunk tonight of a spell

Deeper than the owl’s or bat’s

That wet of wings may not fly

Bedraggled up on the iroko, they stand

Emptied of hearts, and

Therefore will not, stir, no, not

Even at dawn for then

They must scurry in to hide.

So let us roll over our back

And again roll to the beat

Of drumming all over the land

And under its ample soothing hand

Joined to that of the sea

We will settle to sleep of the innocent and free.

Streamside exchange

CHILD

River bird, river bird.

Sitting all day long

On hook over grass,

River bird, river bird.

Sing to me a song

Of all that pass

And say,

Will mother come back today?

BIRD

You cannot know

And should not bother;

Tide and market come and go

And so shall your mother.


Song

I can look the sun in the face

But the friends that I have lost

I dare not look at any.

Yet, I have held.

Them all in my arms, shared with them

The same bath and bed, often

Devouring the same dish, drunk as soon

On tea as on wine, at that time

When but to think of an ill, made

By God or man, was to find

The cure prophet and physician

Did not have.

Yet, to look

At them now I dare not,

Though I can look the sun in the face.