Lament of the Kayayoo

if your walls could find a tongue
in these troubled times
in fact, (if the wall gecko could talk)
how many stories would it tell—
(maybe some Aiyana some Black some Nellie)

will the stories come from virgin fields
long like sermons of what eyes
failed to see behind the Veil or in the dark
and became still before a harsh chorus
like the ancient tales of a solemn trance in Reddish Summer
and in the haggard silence the gendarme danced on
like nature too tongue tied to speak

wish the night could talk tonight
(about turner and the mourners
sun-struck by the plantation sun)
about shattered hopes in the dark night
of images lost deep, deep in the black night
of mothers who died that a child may live
without seeing their cries their eyes

in this cold, cold world of wandering dreams
who will be saved when virtue and crime
weigh the same in a man black in the dark
lite in the sun with beauty and ugliness
walking with truth and lies on open streets
from Soweto to Rio de Janeiro from Cuba to Alabama

I have enough memories from the past
to last me longer than I need
in this cold, cold world of chance

will this malevolent memory speak with a tongue
full of kisses to restore sight and hearing and speech
to the Saharan mole for him to smile and put on
a painted face for truckfuls of men to laugh
and sing, and be content and with an open-heart
hum like we harp to the Songbird's majesty in ease

or like a bitter well
let everything drop pale
from billow to billow with the sorrow
of the pilot’s dread and in tales of hungering teeth
share the storm of tales for shadows to draw back

still with faces pressed against frosted panes of time
if only modest church walls could talk on the day of Pentecost
(oh if the church mouse could call us by name)
maybe the lord will be weeping to a tree
to free souls locked between heron and wren
in every graveyard of the world
where Cain and his grandchildren hang
from a blessed cross condemned by every writ

From Abor to Columbus

  Gods of my Birthwaters
I carry your heart with me (I carry it in
my soul) I am never without it (anywhere
I go you go with me) and whatever are my thoughts
(you are in the thoughts)


Gods of my Birthplace
I have no life (you are my life)
I have no future (for you are
my future) and I have no dream of my own
(for you are in every dream)

where can I go
without you (can the tiger deny itself
the spots in its skin)
I carry the birthmark
of the tiger

but here is the deepest sorrow
the darkness I carry in my waywardness
stranded at crossroads away from Home
(and this is the root of the problem) I’m in love
with macaroni-n-cheese
(and I’m told that’s civilization
away from yam puddings we knew at Home) and we
are forced to drink stinging grief and smile calmly

I have taken a new name (and it wrung my hands
and killed my memory of Home) and turn my soul
to a stone and under the dark veil (I have to learn to live again)

it’s the he-goat that learns something
when it loses an ear
on the long running highways
of blues

how can I forget to pay my debts
to ancestral Birthwaters
when many stones are thrown
at my last smile and the pit
has become my solitary mast
at the bay of the Master Termite

it is the herring that said
homebound is the last resort of the maimed goat
maybe, when the northern breeze comes
I’ll take the deep dive Homeward to where
the broods eat grains of sorghum from scuffed
pages of the mother’s palm and the sun’s last rays
bring joy to dying lips

walking this long dark road
dancing to nowhere to call Home

your tattoos on my soul shatter my dreams
and here I sit holding to an albatross
searching through echoes
of yesterdays for a bright eye
to see through footprints of frozen tears

in this twilight zone
I gather in the silence
the will to sail on before the sun
is gone from silence
and the lighthouse eaten by the storm

To Robert Frost

you have been acquainted with the night
I have known the night
you have walked out in the rain and back in the rain
I have stood in the desert looking for the rain
you have out-walked the furthest city light
I have out-walked the allays without the light

you have looked down the saddest city lane
I have looked at the neighborhood with pain
you have passed by the watchman on his beat
I have seen them and took their beat
and you dropped your eyes, unwilling to explain
I never dropped my eyes yet they launch a complain

you stood still and stopped the sound of feet
when far away an interrupted cry
came over houses from another street
I stood still but couldn’t stop
the sound of a cockroach’s feet
when I pleaded with carriage with my cry
when they banquet on the babe’s blood across the street

if you were not called back or none came to say good-bye
and you knew further still at an unearthly height
one luminary clock against the sky
will proclaim the time as neither wrong nor right
I join you in praises I too I’m acquainted with the night

Remembering Sendai

last night the waves came
crashing in breaking through the gates
running in and out of the cooking places
collecting the firewood from the hearths
turning sleeping places into swimming pools
and where once stood Dad’s radiogram
is now the assembly of the eternal hum of angry waves

we watched the waves come in last night
we saw their anger dispensed at our doorsteps
we heard the weeping the sobbing
the deep and low moans
and wondered mournfully why God deserted us
Amina lost the trinkets
the only memory of her Grandma
Angelina stood outside her compound
shivering from the cold with her hands on her breasts
where can she find her children
where once we called home
and tendered the goats and fowls of Grandpa
we have lost to the angry water of cruel waves

the waves came in last night
it took away our joy forever
yet when we looked at the sky so blue
the sun shining so bright
and wondered mournfully
why the long blades of grass beneath our feet
sway in the bumpy breeze
dancing in rhythms with so much ease
while we shiver in the cold
weeping and sobbing
in deep and low moans
when the waves came last night