The Nation Newspaper

Category: Niyi Osundare

  • Snapsong 121

    Snapsong 121

    Niyi Osundare

     

    Strange, strange year it all has been
    Strange like a seven-fingered hand
    Our expected Year of Perfect Vision
    Has been blinded by unforeseeable blight

    January flung open the door
    To a bright, auspicious year
    With dreams new and heady like stories
    Straight out of a book of a dozen chapters

    A few shy weeks later a viral cloud
    Engulfed the world.
    From the House of COVID erupted a plague
    The kind never seen in a hundred years

    An orphaning, widowing Scourge besieged the world
    Crowded morgues spilled over into constipated graves
    Death danced naked in the marketplace
    Crimson wails assailed the winds

    Drastic lockdowns, noontime curfews
    Compulsive distancing, shuttered factories
    And hunger lines wind round city blocks
    As the homeless trade tribulations with the hopeless

    Twelve chapters later and the outgoing year
    Still opens up like a Book of Endless Horrors
    A diminished world is desperately looking
    For the mouth to tell its story

  • NOW LET’S DO THE SING-ALONG

    By Niyi Osundare

     

    Part 4

    Tere pampa tere pampa

    Tere minnan minnan tere

     

    Lend me a spot

    In your House of Honey

    House of Honey

    House of Honey

    A handsome spot

    In your House of Honey

     

    Tere pampa tere pampa

    Tere minnan minnan tere

     

    Let me in

    When the sun is down

    Sun is down

    Sun is down

    Let me in

    When the moon is high

     

    Tere pampa tere pampa

    Tere minnan minnan tere

     

    Let’s lift the skirt

    Of the lurking shadow

    Lurking shadow

    Lurking shadow

    Let’s hide a song

    In its billowing hem

     

    Tere pampa tere pampa

    Tere minnan minna tere

     

    Lead me all the way

    To your Temple of Sighs

    Temple of Sighs

    Temple of Sighs

    Lead me all the way

    To your Temple of Sighs

     

    Tere pampa tere pampa

    Tere minnan minnan tere

  • TREE

    The tree

    hardly laughs these days

     

    And when it does

    its lips are yellow

     

    with tales of friends

    done down by the saw

     

    Their corpses

    carted off by the timber merchants

     

    There are funeral pyres

    in the clearing

     

    Killing pain in the crest

    oozing boils on the bark

     

    The iroko has no time

    to count its rings

     

    The mahogany’s girth

    lies shredded by

     

    A careless cutlass

    Don’t ask the woodpecker

     

    About the orchestra around its beak

    or the weaverbird for the laughter of its loom

     

    There is a gaping fright in the foliage

    as the rain falls brown between the seasons. . . .

     

    (Pause)

     

    When the forest loses its crown

    the earth forgoes its head.

  • LET’S DO THE SING ALONG

    LET’S DO THE SING ALONG

    Niyi Osundare

     

     

    Tere pampa tere pampa

    Tere minnan minnan tere

     

    The road to the heart

    Is through the mind

    Through the mind

    Through the mind

    The road to the heart

    Is through the mind

     

    Tere minnan minnan tere

     

    The richest robe

    Is a rag-in-waiting

    Rag-in-waiting

    Rag-in-waiting

    The richest robe

    Is a rag-in-waiting

     

    Tere minnan minnan tere

     

    Your bitterest foe

    May be your waiting friend

    Waiting  friend

    Waiting friend

    Your bitterest foe

    May be your waiting friend

     

    Tere minnan minnan tere

     

    We are upside down

    Like bats at night

    Bats at night

    Bats at night

    We are upside down

    Like bats at night

     

    Tere pampa tere pampa

    Tere minnan minnan tere

  • FOR JP CLARK

     

     

                                  III

    . . . We row life’s boat

    With the paddle of your words*

     

    Bound to a country which abused his Muse

    He spent his days in the risk-fraught

    Entanglements of its tortuous history

     

    The casualties, oh so many, and cruelly uncanny

    The insatiable graveyard of the hopes

    Of a nation enthralled by avoidable death

     

    But how does one pluck dainty fruit

    From a tree so persistently bitter

    How snatch victory from such unspeakable rout?

     

    Ask the poet’s ceaseless quarrel

    With a country which refuses to become a nation

    That inscrutable monster that preys on its own brood

     

    The bitter aftermath of a war without winners

    Its corrosive partialities, its fatal blindnesses

    Its mass, unburied dead, the vapid proclamations

     

    Of a state that never lives beyond the map. . . .

    Master-rower on this raft, but alas, his paddle

    Never landed him on a saner shore

     

    But he was here

    Man of his time and other times

    He tilled our tears and leveraged our laughters

     

    In his many and varied songs

    We learn that the beauty we seek abroad

    Lives so painfully unseen in our backyard

     

    Where is he gone; where is he

    Tell me now

    Before the boatman arrives

  • LET’S DO THE SING-ALONG

    Niyi Osundare

     

     

     

             2

    Tere pampa tere pampa

    Tere minnan minnan tere

     

    Those who fall

    Will rise again

    Rise again

    Rise again

    They who fall

    Shall rise again

     

    Tere pampa tere pampa

     

    A gentle urge

    Is a sweet command

    Sweet command

    Sweet command

    A gentle urge

    Is a sweet command

     

    Tere pampa tere pampa

     

    Come with me

    To the house of Joy

    House of Joy

    House of Joy

    Not very far

    From the house of Sorrow

     

    Tere pampa tere pampa

     

    The moon walks slow

    On the stairs of the clouds

    Stairs of the clouds

    Stairs of the clouds

    The moon walks slow

    On the stairs of the clouds

     

    Tere pampa tere pampa

    Tere minnan minnan tere

  • SNAPSONG 119

    What this COVID has done and undone

    Only the devil can surpass the horror

    Our world is upside down

    Like the bat which begat its scourge

     

     

    Six feet apart

    Or six feet below

    The person next in line

    May be a Walking Plague

     

     

    When last did you shake hands

    With a happy neighbour

    When last did you hug

    A long-missed friend?

     

     

    COVID-cowered and mortally shaken

    We tremble behind closed doors

    Saturated in the memories

    Of the world we used to know

     

     

    Frightened from the barber’s shop for seven months

    My head is now a wild temple of unintended locks

    The furloughed dentist’s chair is busy wondering

    What has become of my ancient bones

     

     

    The street now a bedlam of masks

    Diverse, daring, and blatantly bizarre

    It’s a long, long time

    Since I saw our world smile – or smirk

     

  • Snapsong 118

    Now Let’s Tell A Fishy Tale

     

    The lesson I learnt

    In the school of fishes

    No dry teacher can teach

     

    In a thousand years.

    Behold the phalanx of fins surging

    In and out of the classroom of waiting waters

     

    The Tilapia shouts

    “T” for “Teacher”,

    A chalky smile on its learned lips

     

    The Rainbow Fish

    Glides slowly through

    The alphabet of its hues

     

    Block-headed Catfish

    And its dark, intelligent body

    Glistering, glistening in the liquid sun

     

    Veteran hoopman of the fireplace

    Peppersoup prince with the soft, alluring order

    A head too big for a modest crown

     

    And here comes Obokun bokun bokun*

    Full, round fleshfeast and triumphant treat

    Seminal conference of the onion’s pungent opinion

     

    The pepper’s spicy prize, tomato’s toast

    Sokoyokoto: Here comes the magic key

    To the husband’s heart, then his purse

     

    A Mudskipper’s hop-step-and-jump

    Lands it pat on my farm-ward path,

    A guest so welcome, though so unexpected

     

    Loud laughter in the kitchen tonight

    Rain, rain, rain, for ever beneficent,

    Swell the river and its teaming tribes

     

    Oh so delicious my endless lesson

    In the gut’s endless craving

    And the school of fishes

     

    *A kind of fish highly valued and cooked as a special delicacy

    ** Make-the-husband-robust

  • Snapsong 117

    Snapsong 117

    By Niyi Osundare

    Do you really measure your height

    By the genuflection of your neighbour

    How happy is the sun

    That frowns above your head?

     

    To whose ravaging greed

    Do we owe our howling stomach

    Whose iron grip imprisons the moon

    On our darkest night?

     

    Their thunder rides rough-shod

    Above our graveyard silence

    They whose plot and plan

    Is the harvest of our sigh

     

    Long-toothed sharks disturb the waves

    Terror in their surge, fright in their fins

    Who will build an iron cage

    For the tribe of minnows?

     

    Eating Chiefs that they are,

    They eat the yam and eat the farm

    They call the people to a dance of praise

    But hungry ghosts obey their summons

     

    If you fill the world with pots poison

    You will down your dinner with a cup or two

    If you throw a stone into a crowded market

    It may find its way to your father’s head

  • THE LAKE CAME TO MY HOUSE

    THE LAKE CAME TO MY HOUSE

    By Niyi Osundare

    It all began as a whisper among

    The leaves. The tree’s tangled tale

    And the wanton narrative of the wind

     

    Then, the pit pat pit pat bing bang bing

    Of the hooves of the trampling rain

    My shuddering roof, my wounded house

     

    A shunting of shingles

    Unraveling of rafters

    And the wind dropped a pool

     

    In my living room. The sky

    Rumbled like a stricken bull;

    Lightning zigzagged its fire through

     

    The darkening clouds. Wind-driven,

    Tornado-tormented, the Lake overran

    Its fence, pouring its piled-up anger

     

    In the careless streets.

    Levees (built with levity)

    Collapsed like hapless mounds

     

    Roads lost their names,

    Streets their memories

     

    A torrential torment enthralled the city

    The day the Lake came down my street

    And took my house away.

     

    *From City Without People: The Katrina Poems. Black Widow Press, Boston, MA, 2011.