Sea Dirge
(for Abeo and Gwen, daughters of two rivers:
Philadelphia and Osogbo)
 
ogbanje nwa olokun
elegede
nwa wa Si n'otulu ime onaa
elegede*
 
 
it is not the buried beaches of osogbo
that still compel me
nor the pond-skater radiance
of the triumphal arterial
in the season of osun
but the spirits of those confluences
when our echoes revved
through the shuddering cross-roads
and rejuvenated nights
as dead as reticent epitaphs
and lo the east and the west
lost their distinctions
so we breathed into the ticking diameters
of our contingency
but when the votary maid
the fertile carrier of the nubile calabash
of her parallax tribe
passed by our pondering windows
down the eastern sesame of the sacred grove
were the visions enkindled
not those of alternating traditions?
 
of the burial at sea -
with the sad faces of fatigued
sailors singing of wondrous yonders
in trussed voices
each hand a pentad on an opposite hreast
flanking a conclusion awaiting
the return of the ferryman
out steps the captain
the reclaimed ambassador of isis
his pronouncements the end-notes
to a foreshadowed jubilee
"home is the sailor, home to the seas"
over the stern the sailor is reconciled to his cords
and the paddlers of fortune return
to the tunnels of the mind
with hoarse throats
but brimming treasure chests
visions also of resurgence-
with castellated peaks illuminating
the paths of ascension
and the smoke of nativity inciting
the mists of time:
am i the salvation army woman who looked
 to jesus to wash her sins away?
 the pillar of the suns of kush
who chanted in christmas grottos:
"santa, santa, i want it all"?
 or the hearty boom of the steam ship:
"let us make up in the bar
 the time we have wasted in the mosque"?
but the great beard withholds
the keys of the unravelling
no foreclosing milestones hinder
the routes of return
those who travelled on the talons of  vultures
can they return on the feathers of horn-bills?
and when is the appointed
elucidation of returnees?
 "listen then, offspring of the second genesis
season after season
when the upland naiads come home
after they have lived their worlds
and the lore of wayfarers
replenish the cult of the sea
the biographies of revolutions will ever be
replete with unanswered questions
for where the catacombs
are renewed by the philosopher's stone
there are no previews no denoument
save emerald tablets"
and when from the height of the olumo rock
we garnered the dense sprawl of abeokuta
was yours not the studied unravelling
of the rusty foliages beyond the ogun river
- the erudition
of well-nourished resource centres
and mine the anaphaIbetic sagas
harvested from ancient fire-sides?
 
ogbanje nwa olokun
kwu-o onu  yi-o
ego nwa olokun
kwu-o onu yi-o
obu  n'ibu ogbanje
kwu-o onu yi-o
ego nwa olokun
kwu-o onu yi-o**
 
yemoja, my feet are yet to plumb
the streets of philadelphia
or to stand afore the springs of florida
and hearken to the solfatara
of fortune-priests
catapaulted from chinatown
and red-indian settlements
to the centre-stage of a season-long history
but have you, pilgrim, witnessed
the stark truths of the primal confrontation
or the chequered race of the second parallel
terminate at the base of the sycamore
and the totems of the river transmogrified
in the museums of the earth?
where the sea embraces the shore-line
the surf is in ascent
as the bonds of voyaging
are in recession
in the charmed ring of the tribe
where the bearer of destiny
consecrates the fore of the spirit-child
with pellets of mortality
then, it is not the wrench
of foster drums alone
that bar the winding path
of the emptying cycle
but the trinity of the lacquered mirror too
and the homoepathy of the suffurating pot
wherein the olokun river fingers
the pregnancies of aborted missions
first, the sematic staccatos
of the queen of the coast:
"the cradles of the river basin
are older than the graveyards
of your earth
and neither your incantations
nor your pellets can re-chart
the course of the fleet
for I am the marquess of the sea
bound only to the rituals
of the subliminal flux
when the sages of your tribe
were confounded by a glimpse
of the smoke-filled depths
did they not lose their language
and all their rehearsed subpoenas
become chants of reverence:
'live forever, great beard
of the inner frontier'?
who then amongst you can bid
the womb of the niger to cease?
wherever my kindred spirits gather
there am i to be counted
illuminating the measure between
your coast-line and the ocean depths
for the knots of olokun
are forever"
round and round swirled the song and dance
of the drawn circle
before the eruption of the noon priest
in rattling expositions
of red bands and white shawls:
"the earth does not vanish
before the advance of the sea
both have multiple dimensions
the mist is earth
so all your fluid presences
the font of the road
but ours is not to stand akimbo
and bellow that the sea is myth
and has no breast no milk
or that those sirens
that whistle through the night
are else but sub-marine convoys
ours is to follow the trail of the red oil
and to charge at your frozen idioms:
'cease, raiders of the gasping kitchen pot
cease, wreckers of the wailing womb'
whole lives rest
on the palm of the road
- the scout of the earth
the great balancer of the universe
tarry then, o marquess
your dues are become those of the tribe"
ashikodi was there, he of the famous head-walks
and in his moment of foaming consciousness
spoke again the contiguous paradigm
of the soda fountain:
"what will libation be without wine?"
so, yemoja, does the leaps of vision
close on the lee-ways of denial
when the tribe encircles to reclaim
the ineffable vowels of its nativity
for the tourist no terminal punctuations
are possible, only cautious annotations
 
*ogbanje-o, ebili
nwa olokun-o, ebili
inye m mmanya m'alaa, ebili
Inye m oji m'ataa, ebili
ogbanje-o, ebili
nwa olokun-o, ebili ***
 
the sea is in my blood too
its heights and depths call my heel-prints
I am a child of the initial nexus
and have sifted with
the boftomless basket of the delta
the monodies of footnote-hunters:
"deep in the navel of the forest
in the dead of night
behind a tree of their fathers' time
we lurk, waiting for mermaids to rise
from the bowels of an ageless river
all around us life begins and ends noisily
but we have not come so far
for such dry testimonies
our dissertations await
the footnotes from this expedition
a figure moves on the river-banks
a hunter's gun roars
the furore of passage and the signal of blood
seize our ears and our nostrils
still we lurk
oracles carved from mountain-high bookshelves
our time and our place are well-chosen
if those palmwine stories
we heard in the village
have any heads at all
so we shall stay here and wait awhile
until we can no more
then we shall return to our desks
and punctuate the chapters
of our dissertations
with a quod erad demonstratum"
- monodies for which the panacea
of the water-tight basket is a cryptic salvagetion:
the child who dances the usurugede
does he not know that usurugede
is a spirit dance?
between the footnote-hunter
and the pilgrim, yemoja
there are arched convergences
like the paparazzi from archeological laboratories
who comprehend not
that the navel of the earth
is not history in stasis
nor mere lines and dots
on the atlas of the posterior
there is history here
but both in the carbon dates of ancient shrines
and the innocence of blank parchments
both in the snatched language of the chameleon
- the messenger of osanobua****
and the day-old tragedy of priestesses
who know much little
of the halos of the pantheon
in a thousand rings of the larger tribe
I have seen stilettos veer off the dance-floor
and point the diagonal way
homeward to the stream
seen the village pond bare its chest
and increase the tattoo of the graveyard
and handwritings on the wall
dripping with the blood of mackerels
they glitter:
the aquifers with which returnee fishermen
fresh from the megapolis of oceania
cast their certain nets for prize catches
the sea-shells and the corals
of the tri-colour boat dance
and the flagpoles of dream ships
in to dock on the shores of the moon
but the cadence of the sea
is the requiemnal of the dirge
for they that clutch at roots
from marbled elevations
or match even mediate volcanoes
with tea-cup thunders
 
yes, they that travelled on the talons of vultures
to the slave farms of the great junkyard
can come home on the feathers  of hornbills
to the very reaches of their chosen seas
but through the narrow path
of the inner tribe
past the cenotaphs of nomads
not in the jacuzzi depths of salle portugal
or via the papered voids
of bacchanal revivals
so come home, dear soul, come home
from the bubbles into the deep
the core is communion.