The Lagoon laughs at our triumphal boasts and primordial retorts.
For Lagos is a city with a saner story, saner voice, and saner vision. . . .
Drums; then the song:
Eko Akete,ile ogbon
Arodede maa ja o
Aromisa leegbeleegbe*
I
The Sea dances around your feet,
nestles in the plural nationality
between your fractious sands;
your text a boatload of blue tropes:
Mangrove mists, hazy hieroglyphs
billowing banter of waters speaking from both ends
of their mouth; laughter of the lagoon some-
times lush like the lethal beauty of hyacinths
A poem scribbled by the liquid lore
of a thousand deities, white-cap legends
never wrong in their rites, their temples made of water,
a vase of prayers germinates in their garden of songs;
A poem: etched by the daggerpoints of an alien conqueror
who, Bible in hand, empire in mind, mesmerised
by the amplitude of land and water, screamed
“Laa-gos! Laa- gos!” till his larynx trembled like a gale
Two names the City has, two souls,
one native and inexpressibly deep,
the other a rapid baptism from a foreign altar;
the two sometimes kiss, and sometimes quarrel
And Water here, wiser, wider, than land,
hoarding brackish dreams and broken shells,
the tides foaming like epileptic tempests
exploding in white tonalities and muffled thunders
And Lagos said: I will sing my own song
There is no stone in my mouth…
Arodede maa ja o
Aromisa leegbe leegbe
* Eko, city of wisdom
The one that hovers precariously without falling
Billowing eternity of water
(From If Only the Road Could Talk: New & Selected Poems (2017); first published in Lagos of the Poets, compiled and edited by Odia Ofeimun)
(Continued next week)