Aderemi RAJIOYELADE, Nigerian scholar and poet, teaches African and African American literature, literary theory and creative writing in the Department of English, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. His research interest covers aspects of black literature and criticism, cultural studies and the emergent tradition of African female poetry in the twentieth century. In 1999, Dr. Raji- Oyelade was a Fulbright fellow of the American Studies Summer Institute at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo. He recently served as Resident THE SPIRIT If Poetry be the murmurs of gods stake me stab me with the spi rit of tong ues If Poetry is the music of the mind bind me stake me to whispers of winsome winds.... Teach me what rainfalls drum into corn-ears of Earth what the sunbird sings what wandering feet tell morning dews. If Poetry be the word which gives birth to flesh and phantoms of worlds show me what riverbeds hide from wandering eyes show me the monkey's path in a platoon of twines and trees Oh tell me the ancestry of ageless roads. Then tell me what desolate streets tell the prodigal sun what common lips tell the cruel crown what patient paupers ask the petty prince. And if Poetry be the horse of glee Give me the fluent kisses of flood above sand and stones. Give me the beauty in the storm the storm in that silent sea give me the cricket's horn <6LEND0RA REVIEWxAfrican Quarterly on the ArtsxVol3@No3&4> <47> II Somebody loved the labourer So he saved him from the weakness of riches. Somebody loved the worker So he locked his salary in the national vault But that salary cannot beg a finger of salad! Somebody loved the teacher He wished him a better wage Not on earth but in heaven or hell Teach the world, inherit nothing but empty sand! A SONG FOR THE WAGELESS i The old masquerades are back In finer drapery of tricks and doublespeak Those who promise a harvest of yams When the land goes lean on wild roots of yaws They are back, the locusts, the tribe of quela birds The old masquerades are back In an entrail of ancestral rags You will know them by their bloated lies. I sang the song before I feel like a broken record. the chameleon's loin the bee's tenor the parrot's echo the squirrel's sax the wind's flute... Give me the sunscript of dance Stake me, stretch me to the spirit house of songs. Poet and Professor of Cultural & Social Diversity at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and at the Eugene Redmond Writers Club of East St. Louis, US. Remi Raji has been the Year 2002 Harry Oppenheimer Visiting Scholar to the Centre for African Studies of the University of Cape Town, South Africa. J I l l Blessed are the deceitful They shall lick the dog's arse When their moon is full. The old masquerades are back In finer drapery of tricks and doublespeak. When is this madness going to mature? HALF THE WORD Half the word is not meat enough for fools Into these bones I must nail pounds of metaphors I must sling similes which stink Like the rot I smell in the air Into your bosom o prodigals I must drive the rage of a lifetime Half the word is not real enough like bones Because in your ears, proverbs sound like pebbles When your madness mature, wake me up And I will tell you what killed your father's father. DREAMTALK (with musical accompaniment: drum, cello or guitar) 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... ABIKU Spirit unto spirit, I waited on my mother's song Even if I lived forty years more, these scars will never fade Whatever I did at birth must have been whispered to the stream Whatever I told the stream must have been sold to the river Whatever the river knows is in the sea's bosom, the ocean's belly. Once I swallowed the river's route, I was lost I became a rebel without teeth, without paddle But the gift of departures delights and threatens Spirit unto spirit, I waited on my mother's fair <49> oil Even if I lived forty years more, these scars will never fade. I was god, the one who took the chicken's head I was masque, the one who waxed songs from the womb I was the repeated corn, the cruel hen pecked and the earth beckoned. Spirit unto child, my father said, My incisions preceded other mighty inventions... I was the invention, other children's dread. Spirit unto child unto man I still threaten my mother with transformations The scars neverfade, the river remains, only the path mocks. AND SENGBEH SAID TO ME... In the enigma of the banter, you see blood In the hump of the open sea, you see the quicksand you see the locks, you see the spare headed snakes Of blighted brotherhood and the burden of hate Sengbeh Pieh, Mende machete, planter, weaver, hunter you seek us through furrows of memory you come to history with a handicap... You overcome a seasoning of weevils Planter, hunter, weaver of dreams And from the blank page of your stories, you said: Take my bones and lick my scars. Forgo the illumination of gloom. Eat of my flesh. Let your fingers grow new tubers. I am the nostalgia of tomorrow! Because I am the beautiful stem of your rainbow tree And my blood flows in the sorghum of this soil I will drive my fingers thro' the trellis of your flesh I will be one with your seeds and your children shall know my name. She cuddled me into rapture, this woman of Bay Then she said: Listen ... here is the conquest of death the uncertainties of loving the rough magician's tale where hemlock becomes honey where history chases myths into silence and legends explode into history... Yes, I will write the poem after this love lesson, Thekweni... GR A WOMAN NAMED DURBAN When I read my poem of lava I sought her face for vital signs I rolled my tongue into an algebra of dance & waited for the sugarcane break of her voice No, no, no she said. Your fire is innocent like the infant's grip at harvest time weak like the dying embers of a tired tourist You do not know my children, my child. Uhmlazi, Empangeni, KwaDukuza Gingindlovu, Umhlanga, Amanzimtoti Do you know them: Umgeni, Inanda, KwaMashu Ntshongeni, the tribal teats of Thekwini Do you know them? No I said, but I will seek them all And I will sing for them till sunset and after the aftermath the secret tales of cleaving love I will write a tattoo of echoes & make your breasts the valley of a thousand stories <50>