The Nation Newspaper

Category: Niyi Osundare

  • RANDOM BLUES (I.D. Blues)

    When you look in the mirror

    What do you see?

    Asking, you look in the mirror

    What do you see?

    Is it what you really are

    Or the figment of an inherited error?

     

     

     

    From your store-bought hair

    To your store-bought head

    Haba, from your store-bought hair

    To your store-bought head

    And all those long-hanging, attachments

    That weigh you down like phony, imported lead

     

     

     

    Does your blackness make you blush

    What do you seek in the hide behind your shame?

    Asking, does your blackness make you blush

    What do you seek in the hide behind your shame?

    So many conspicuous blotches

    On the umbrella of your fame

     

     

     

    Those scouring soaps, those dissembling powders

    Those histrionic hassles, those expensive masks

    Hun, those scouring soaps, those dissembling powders

    Those histrionic hassles, those expensive masks

    These frantic flights from the truth of the Self

    The squandered energies from these de-meaning tasks

     

     

     

    When you look in the mirror

    What do you see?

    Asking, when you look in the mirror

    What do you see?

    A pathetic parody, a pallid grotesquerie

    A funny phantom and its unspeakable horror?

  • SNAPSONGS 5

    Superstition’s street is wider

    Than the boulevard of Science

    The silence of Unknowing

    Is louder than the trumpet of Wisdom

     

    The rain fell from the sky

    It never reached the earth

    Tell me who to blame

    For the sadness of famished dreams

     

     

    There is so much that is

    Neither new nor clear

    About the Nuclear Madness

    A desert of bones, Apocalypse of Ashes

     

     

    Dangerous fires in the hands

    Of playful children

    Live coals on the thatched roof

    At the height of the harmattan season

     

    Diligent servant, deadly master

    Wisdom so foolishly deployed

    Monster which quells its thirst

    With the blood of its maker

     

    But oh Science, Daughter of Light

    Borderless Pathfinder, gem in hidden rock

    Can we find our way through night’s jungle

    Without your magic lamp?

  • SNAPSONGS

    My myth is truer than yours

    My God is godder than your own

    In his holy and mighty name

    I kill and maim as an act of faith

     

    The churchiest of all church people

    The mosquest of all mosque goers

    Deafening Hallelujahs and Allahu Akbars

    In this holy land of righteous rogues

     

    Some close their eyes while they pray

    Others open them wide like an expressway

    Passing Angels sometimes come with mobile banks

    How can you grab your portion if you are blind in prayer?

     

    Miracles fall from the sky like reckless booties

    Haul home your own in a chariot of prayers

    Tease your wants with a banquet of wishes

    Live all day in your castle in the air

     

    Scream and screech like one possessed

    The louder the prayer, the faster the answer

    Deafen the town with your thunderous entreaties

    Ride heavenward on the camel of the chaos

     

    “Ora et labora”, the golden rule instructs

    But we pray the prayer and forget the work

    The ears of Heaven are sore from our shouts

    Yet our faith is foul, our ways so impure

  • RANDOM BLUES (Heartthrob Blues)

    Between teeth and tongue

    A spate of bitter quarrels

    Say, between teeth and tongue

    A spate of bitter quarrels

    A silent storm, hardly foretold,

    Sometimes brews in the belly of empty barrels

     

    If you become a hammer, do not

    Turn the world into a wilderness of nails

    Say, if you become a hammer, do not

    Turn the world into a wilderness of nails

    Life’s narrative, muses the village wag,

    Is oftentimes a mix of half-remembered tales

     

    Let me wear your ring

    Around my finger, not my neck

    Pray, let me wear your ring

    Around my finger, not my neck

    I am not that juicy fruit

    Hanging low for the hasty peck

     

    I know my heart’s little room

    In the house of my body

    Yes, I know my heart’s little room

    In the house of my body

    Before you get the key to its tender door

    You must pass through a deep and solemn study

     

    A rock fell on her, and then she said

    “I have been hit by harder things”

    Say, a rock fell on her, and then she said

    “I have been hit by harder things”

    Pummeled several seasons like yam in mortar

    I am a patient victim of graver sins

  • Random blues

    Colour is creed

    Appearance is destiny

    Say, colour is creed

    Appearance is destiny

    In this ‘just and egalitarian’ nation

    Many lies sustain our need

     

    The longest whip

    Is for those who forget

    Yes, the longest whip

    Is for those who forget

    The proverbs teach us

    To remember, not to merely regret

     

    Hapless like a fish without its fins

    Grotesque like a face without a nose

    Hun un, hapless like a fish without its fin

    Grotesque like a face without a nose

    They seek fast knowledge in open books

    Forgetting the wisdom in the ones they close

     

    There is more to me

    Than the face you see

    Hear? More to me

    Than the face you see

    So, tap me fair, touch me deep

    A million selves in a single me

     

    The scar is

    The memory of the wound

    Say, the scar is

    The memory of the wound

    In the castle of the skin

    Lives an old nagging quiz

  • Random blues

    Let sleeping words lie

    Spare them the truth of sound

    Say, let sleeping words lie

    Spare them the truth of sound

    In the land of sinister silence

    Whatever gets lost is never found

     

    The sweetest things never go

    Without their bitter trail

    Yes, sweetest things never go

    Without their bitter trail

    What is life, asks the sage,

    If not a long and complex tale

     

    The diva craves a wrinkle-free day

    And daubs her face with magic powder

    Ha ha  ha, the diva craves a wrinkle-free day

    And daubs her face with magic powder

    She walks down the road to the dizzying

    Gaze of every David and every Dauda

     

    Listen to your clothes

    Don’t wash them in unfriendly water

    Say, listen to your clothes

    Don’t wash them in unfriendly water

    Hear them flaunt the fable of their fabric

    In colours that never fade nor falter

     

    Battered several seasons, they no longer

    Know the way to the house of Anger

    Alas, battered so many seasons, they no longer

    Know the way to the house of Anger

    But if they pause and shake the shelves

    They may find solace in the book of Laughter

  • WORLD WAR III, HERE WE COME (2)

    (In the background, a song, threnodically:

     An fo’ye l’oju/ An min Janduku j’oye/ An fo’ye l’oju*)

     

    Grand World War, here we come

       From a cannibal asylum to a fatal farce

    The Big One is coming, Apocalypse of Ashes

    The world we know is tottering on the brink

     

    Two Boy-Kings with clownish heads

    Both loud-mouthed and supremely insane

    So many nuclear toys under their intemperate command

    They boast and bluff and provoke a blast

     

    “You have no place in our Nuclear Club”,

    The bigger Boy tells the younger one”

    “Destroy your toys and invite my gang

    To come to your house and inspect your forge”

     

    “But your land is full of the lethal stuff,

    Your land and those of all your friends

    What is good for one Gangster is good for the other

    You look too dirty to be Mr. Clean”

     

    And so, war drums and drums of war

    A new mad Emperor in the Western realms

    Who tweets and tattles before he thinks

    And takes the bomb as a trendy toy

     

    Open your eyes, Peoples of the World

    Light your future with a lamp from your past

    The clouds now gathering in the seething sky

    Will drown us all if we fail to kick

     

    *They  blinded the world/ They put a crook on the throne/ They have blinded the world

  • WORLD WAR III, HERE WE COME (1)

    (In the background, this song, threnodically:

     An fo’ye l’oju/ An min Janduku j’oye/ An fo’ye l’oju*)

     

    I’ve just dropped the Mother of All Bombs

    On some distant land of hills and caves

    Gave the talkative Press a fiery fray

    To divert their hunt from my Russian ruse

     

    A few days before, I fired humanitarian missiles

    Into the seething theatre of the Syrian blaze

    It is a Super-Power device, prim ‘n proper

    To use a massive fire to spread the little ones

     

    My heart broke into pieces when I saw those kids

    Twisting and jerking from an overdose of gas

    I wept and wept till I filled a bucket

    Though I decreed a ban which excluded their kind

     

    And now my Armada swarms to the China Sea

    Monstrous, massive, majestically murderous

    The famed Spanish Fleet was a platoon of minnows

    Beside these sharks with their teeth of fire

     

    Nights of fire, skies of flame

    Behold the lethal beauty of exploding ordinance

    The masterly Mohawk and its mindless mayhem

    Named after a tribe we have since erased

     

    Hawks in the sky with the mask of eagles

    Mammoth sea monsters, terror from the depths

    The era of ‘appeasement’ is gone and gone

    As we march shocked and awed to a twilight of war

     

    *They  blinded the world/ They put a crook on the throne/ They have blinded the world

  • SNAP-SONGS (1)

    Every good poem

    Is a jungle of non-sense

    Waiting for a keen revelation

    Of its hidden sense

     

    To every eye

    Its two pupils

    And a college of

    Boundless visions

     

    I need the night’s eye

    To see the serenity

    Of your silence

    The unspoken prophecy

     

    Of days with vanished wings

    And restless continents

    Heaving in the pocket

    Of a spendthrift hour

     

    The tree cannot sleep

    From the savagery of the poachers

    They came

    They sawed

    They (almost) conquered

     

    The quick

    are too quick

    The living

    Are livid with living

     

    Life’s clock has a thousand faces

     

     

  • RANDOM BLUES 500

    Our rulers eat and eat

    They are buried beneath their greed

    Haba!, our rulers eat and eat

    They are buried beneath their greed

    They forget the teeming folks

    Who wrestle with the scourge of need

     

     Yonder leaders are full of influence

    Our rulers have a bout of influenza

    Agbaga!, Yonder leaders are full of influence

    Our rulers have a bout of influenza

    We wail in want, we crouch in fear

    They squander our fortune like an endless bonanza

     

    They rigged themselves into the mainstream

    Shed no tear when they splash and drown

    Yes, rigged themselves into the mainstream

    Shed no tear when they splash and drown

    They will dance through the town in naked pomp

    Commanding us to cheer them in their absent gown

     

    The djinn in the goblet of power

    Wink with witches and mammoth monsters

    Say, the djinn in the goblet of power

    Wink with witches and mammoth monsters

    Those never drowned in its sea of madness

    Are watchful of its befores and wary of its afters

     

    The politician is a hopeless scoundrel

    Who speaks with a thousand mouths

    Beeni, the politician is a hopeless scoundrel

    Who speaks with a thousand mouths

    A patchwork of discordant aspects

    Like a foul, unsightly mongrel