The Nation Newspaper

Category: Niyi Osundare

  • FOR MOYO OGUNDIPE (3)

    (Bata sounds in the background; a hint of sax and flute)

    Creation lived at the tip of your fingers

    In vivid hues and human aspects

    You sent the brush on countless errands

    Its rainbow homecoming a feast of many flairs

     

     

    Osun rippled like a friendly python

    In the forest of your paint

    Fertile waters were the blessing

    Which rewarded your gaze

     

     

    In the solace of a silence

    Only felt in the method of creative madness

    In the bottomless depths of a mind so divine

    In the topless height of a vision so exalted

     

     

    You lived, head haloed in magic mists

    Feet shod in loam and breathing clay

    Your days populated by incorrigible dreams

    Your night a marketplace of priceless wares

     

     

    And those women, Nefertiti-necked

    Supple, statuesque, murmuring mermaids

    Whose lower regions teach us all

    Their economy of scales; Lagos Socialites

     

     

    With lips supple like forbidden vows

    Sundiata’s Daughter so lusciously free

    From the beast and burden of Empire

    Market Women who hold the moon between their legs……..

     

     

    Bearded cobras, lyric lore

    Dripping canopy, dark and daring-dense

    In this Forest of a Thousand Wonders

    Trees talk, the wind obeys. . . .

     

    Rolling hills of Ijesa Isu, let him pass

    Your native son is here in rainbow shrouds

    The valiant wayfarer is back at last

    Oh Earth, unlock your gate; divine his entry.

     

     

  • FOR MOYO OGUNDIPE (2)

    (Bata sounds in the background; a hint of sax and flute)

    Gone too soon

    That swagger

    The “Lancey M”

     

    And its playful mischief

    Its seamless generosity

    The rebellious rascality

     

     

    Of its youthful appeal

    That law-less laughter

    Which thunders above

     

     

    The hush of fearful custom

    The countless thou-shalt-nots

    Inscribed in stone

     

    And flaying whip. . .

    Poet: peripatetic and protean

    You tease quickening colours

     

    Into the rainbow

    Of your “painted harmonies”.

    We see the sound, we hear the hue

     

     

    That presence, your presence

    Handsome in its ebony tenacity

    The easy motion of its music

     

     

    Oh how I miss

    Your wry, intelligent humour

    The riveting ribaldry of our revels

     

     

    How I miss

    Your rainbow laughter

    That fertile garden, your mind

     

  • FOR MOYO OGUNDIPE (1)

    (Bata sounds in the background; a hint of sax and flute)

    Death came at dusk

    With a brush in its hand

    It drove a nervous evening

     

    From dusk to dark

    The parting sun

    From orange to restive black

     

    Death came with a brush

    Our faces were weary canvas

    For its practiced stroking

     

    In the morning before that dusk

    When your canvas lay open like Opon Ifa,

    Orunmila’s divination tray

     

    You had traced the future’s thought-

    Prints in its powdered silence and blessed

    Our blank prayers with its vivid colours

     

    Thereafter you raised your hand

    And the sky planted it

    In its acreage of looming rainbows

     

    Death came at dusk

    When the hearth still sizzled

    Above the ashes of departed fires

     

    And homing pigeons

    Cooed towards their coop

    Broken corn-grains between their beaks

     

     

    The month was March

    The heat wild and heedlessly haughty

    The wind seeming bent on permanent exile

     

    The water-pot fell on the thresholds

    Of our thirsty dreams, its liquid

    Splashed on the toes of waiting walls