Erm . . . I was trying to find Abiku and a couple of other poems a few days ago and it was one hell of a mission.
It seemed strange to me that we don't have a sticky topic on this section for works of accomplished writers.
I just wanted to start this thread for those works we had to study those days.

Also for poems that placed these men and women into international limelight.
And maybe to serve as a reference for people on the internet.

Abiku - Wole Soyinka

In vain your bangles cast

Charmed circles at my feet;

I am Abiku, calling for the first

And the repeated time.



Must I weep for goats and cowries

For palm oil and the sprinkled ash?

Yams do not sprout in amulets

To earth Abiku's limbs.



So when the snail is burnt in his shell

Whet the heated fragments, brand me

Deeply on the breast. You must know him

When Abiku calls again.



I am the squirrel teeth, cracked

The riddle of the palm. Remember

This, and dig me deeper still into

The god's swollen foot.



Once and the repeated time, ageless

Though I puke. And when you pour

Libations, each finger points me near

The way I came, where



The ground is wet with mourning

White dew suckles flesh-birds

Evening befriends the spider, trapping

Flies in wind-froth;



Night, and Abiku sucks the oil

From lamps. Mother! I'll be the

Supplicant snake coiled on the doorstep

Yours the killing cry.



The ripes fruit was saddest;

Where I crept, the warmth was cloying.

In the silence of webs, Abiku moans, shaping

Mounds from the yolk.

The Renegade - David Diop


My brother you flash your teeth in response to every hyprocrisy

My brother with gold-rimmed glasses

You give your master a blue-eyed faithful look

My poor brother in immaculate evening dress

Screaming and whispering and pleading in the parlours of condescension


We pity you

Your country's burning sun is nothing but a shadow

On your serene ‘civilized’ brow

And the thought of your grandmother's hut

Brings blushes to your face that is bleached

By years of humiliation and bad conscience

And while you trample on the bitter red soil of Africa

Let these words of anguish keep time with your restless step


Oh I am lonely so lonely here.

Not My Business - Niyi Osundare

They picked Akanni up one morning
Beat him soft like clay
And stuffed him down the belly
Of a waiting jeep.
     
       What business of mine is it
       So long they don't take the yam
       From my savouring mouth?

They came one night
Booted the whole house awake
And dragged Danladi out,
Then off to a lengthy absence.

      What business of mine is it
      So long they don't take the yam
      From my savouring mouth?

Chinwewent to work one day
Only to find her job was gone:
No query, no warning, no probe -
Just one neat sack for a stainless record.
     
What business of mine is it
      So long they don't take the yam
      From my savouring mouth?

And then one evening
As I sat down to eat my yam
A knock on the door froze my hungry hand.
The jeep was waiting on my bewildered lawn
Waiting, waiting in its usual silence.

Ibadan - J.P. Clark

Ibadan,

running splash of rust

and gold-flung and scattered

among seven hills like broken

china in the sun.

Abiku - J.P Clark

Coming and going these several seasons,
Do stay out on the baobab tree,
Follow where you please your kindred spirits
If indoors is not enough for you.
True, it leaks through the thatch
When flood brim the banks,
And the bats and the owls
Often tear in at night through the eaves,
And at harmattan, the bamboo walls
Are ready tinder for the fire
That dries the fresh fish up on the rack.
Still, it's been the healthy stock
To several fingers, to many more will be
Who reach to the sun.
No longer then bestride the threshold
But step in and stay
For good. We know the knife scars
Serrating down your back and front
Like beak of the sword-fish,
And both your ears, notched
As a bondsman to this house,
Are all relics of your first comings.
Then step in, step in and stay
For her body is tired,
Tired, her milk going sour
Where many more mouths gladden the heart.

We Have Come Home - Lenrie Peters

We have come home
From the bloodless wars
With sunken hearts
Our booths full of pride-
From the true massacre of the soul
When we have asked
‘What does it cost
To be loved and left alone’

We have come home
Bringing the pledge
Which is written in rainbow colours
Across the sky-for burial
But is not the time
To lay wreaths
For yesterday’s crimes,
Night threatens
Time dissolves
And there is no acquaintance
With tomorrow

The gurgling drums
Echo the stars
The forest howls
And between the trees
The dark sun appears.

We have come home
When the dawn falters
Singing songs of other lands
The death march
Violating our ears
Knowing all our loves and tears
Determined by the spinning coin

We have come home
To the green foothills
To drink from the cup
Of warm and mellow birdsong
‘To the hot beaches
Where the boats go out to sea
Threshing the ocean’s harvest
And the hovering, plunging
Gliding gulls shower kisses on the waves

We have come home
Where through the lighting flash
And the thundering rain
The famine the drought,
The sudden spirit
Lingers on the road
Supporting the tortured remnants of the flesh
That spirit which asks no favour of the world
But to have dignity.

Olokun - J.P Clark

I love to pass my fingers

(As tide thro' weeds of the sea

And wind the tall fern-fronds)

Thro' the strands of your hair

Dark as night that screens the naked moon:

I am jealous and passionate

Like Jehovah, God of the Jews,

And I would that you realise

No greater love had woman

From man than the one I have for you!

But what wakeful eyes of man,

Made of the mud of this earth,

Can stare at the touch of sleep

The sable vehicle of dream

Which indeed is the look of your eyes!

So drunken, like ancient walls

We crumble in heaps at your feet;

And as the good maid of the sea,

Full of rich bounties for men,

You lift us all beggars to your breast.

This thread reminds me of a text I had back in sec school; West African Verse. That book had virtually all the good West African poems. It's a pity very few Nigerians appreciate literature .

Oh I remember "Not My Business"!!

Wud av to dig out ma Anthology

This thread reminds me of my literature days in secondry school, How I miss those periods of indepth reading and analysis! @elde, more puleese!!

@Moyola, Ravenzord and Estrella

You don't know how shocked I am that three people replied on this topic.
Do you guys have any ones, you should post em.

Aite!

Vultures - Chinua Achebe

In the greyness
and drizzle of one depondent
dawn unstirred by harbingers
of sunbreak a vulture
perching high on broken
bone of a dead tree
nestled close to his
mate his smooth
bashed-in head, a pebble
on a steam rooted in a dump of gross
feathers, inclined affectionately
to hers. Yesterday they picked the eyes of a swollen
corpse in a water-logged
trench and ate the
things in its bowel. Full
gorged they chose their roost
keeping the hollowed remnant
in easy range of cold
telescopic eyes. . .
     Strange
indeed how love in other
ways so particular
will pick a corner
in that charnel-house
tidy it and coil up there, perhaps
even fall asleep - her face
turned to the wall!
. . .Thus the Commandant at Balsen
Camp going home for
the day with fumes of
human roast clinging
rebelliously to his hairy
nostrils will stop
at the wayside sweet-shop
and pick up a chocolate
for his tender offspring
waiting at home for Daddy's
return. . .
    Praise bounteous
providence if you will
that grants even an ogre
a tiny glow-warm
tenderness encapsulated
in icy caverns of a cruel
heart or else despair
for in the very germ
of that kindred love is
lodged the perpetuity
of evil.

Nice topic! .  : reminds me of my lit teacher seeing this poems back here . rewind to few years ago, in-depth analysis, reading, imagery, diction,figures of speech, diction, and the likes .mehn then it was all fun.


Freetown, Blood Money  and the bosom of the sea by Sly Cheney Coker
The Dry Season and The executioner's dream by Kwesi Brew (powerful poem)
ours to plough  not to plunder - Niyi osundare
Abiku by J.P clark
we have come home- Lenrie peters (met this man)
No Coffin No Grave- Jared Angira

@ Muki,
So you also read Niyi Osundare

Yeah Jarus i actually did Abiku,Ours to Plough not to plunder, we have come home, freetown, the executioners dream and few others in school


The Breast of the Sea
by Sly Cheney Coker

After our bloody century, the sea will groan
under its weight, somewhere between breasts and anus.
Filled with toxins, her belly will not yield new islands
even though the orphans of East Timor wish it so.
The sea is only capable of so much history:
Noah's monologue, the Middle Passage's cargoes,
Darwin's examination of the turtle's shit,
the remains of the Titanic, and a diver's story
about how the coelacanth was recaptured.
Anything else is only a fractured chela
we cannot preserve, once the sea's belly
has washed itself clean of our century's blight.
Throbbing, the sea's breasts will console some orphans,
but Sierra Leone won't be worth a raped woman's cry,
despite her broken back, this shredded garment,
her hands swimming like horrors of red corals.
But do you, O Sea, long-suffering mistress,
have the balm to heal the wound of her children,
hand to foot the axe, alluvial river flowing into you?


Blood Money
by Sly Cheney Coker

Along the route of this river,
with a little luck, we shall chance upon
our brothers' fortune, hidden with that cold smile
reserved for discreet bankers unmindful of the hydra
growing fiery mornings from our discontent
Wealth was always fashionable, telluric,
not honor pristine and profound.
In blasphemous glee, they raise to God's lips
those cups filled with ethnic offerings
that saps the blood of all human good.
Having no other country to call my own
except for this one full of pine needles
on which we nail our children's lives,
I have put off examining this skull,
savage harvest, the swollen earth,
until that day when, all God's children,
we shall plant a eureka supported by a blood knot.
And remorse not being theirs to feel,
I offer an inventory of abuse by these men,
with this wretched earth on my palms,
so as to remind them of our stilted growth
the length of a cutlass, or if you prefer
the size of our burnt-out brotherhood.

Eldee! Goodman!

Pls , I request for ''Songs of sorrow''. Kofi Awoonor Williams.
''Africa'' Cant rem author.
Dennis Brutus is cool too. Very passionate.
Gabriel Okara. Call of the river nun?
The Vultures.
I really love dis. When am happy I recite poetry to maself only o.

Call of The River Nun - Gabriel Okara

I hear your call

I hear it far away;

I hear it break the circle

Of these crouching hills

I want to view your face

Again and feel your cold

Embrace; or at your brim

To set myself and

Inhale your breath ; or

Like the trees, to watch

My mirrored self unfold

And span my days with

Song from the lips of dawn.

I hear your lapping call;

I hear it coming through;

Invoking the ghost of a child

Listening , where rivers birds hail

Your silver –surface flow



My river’s calling too

Its ceaseless flow impels

My found ‘ ring canoe down

Its inevitable course.

And each dying year

Brings near the sea – bird call,

The final call that

Stills the crested waves

And breaks in two the curtain

Of silence of my upturned canoe

O incomprehensible God!

Shall my pilot be

My unborn stars to that

Final call to Thee

O my river’s complex course?

Songs of Sorrow - Kofi Awoonor


Dzogbese Lisa has treated me thus

It has led me among the sharps of the forest

Returning is not possible

And going forward is a great difficulty

The affairs of this world are like the chameleon faeces

Into which I have stepped

When I clean it cannot go.



I am on the world’s extreme corner,

I am not sitting in the row with the eminent

But those who are lucky

Sit in the middle and forget

I am on the world’s extreme corner

I can only go beyond and forget.



My people, I have been somewhere

If I turn here, the rain beats me

If I turn there the sun burns me

The firewood of this world

Is for only those who can take heart

That is why not all can gather it.

The world is not good for anybody

But you are so happy with your fate;

Alas! the travelers are back

All covered with debt.



Something has happened to me

The things so great that I cannot weep;

I have no sons to fire the gun when I die

And no daughter to wail when I close my mouth

I have wandered on the wilderness

The great wilderness men call life

The rain has beaten me,

And the sharp stumps cut as keen as knives

I shall go beyond and rest.

I have no kin and no brother,

Death has made war upon our house;



And Kpeti’s great household is no more,

Only the broken fence stands;

And those who dared not look in his face

Have come out as men.

How well their pride is with them.

Let those gone before take note

They have treated their offspring badly.

What is the wailing for?

Somebody is dead. Agosu himself

Alas! a snake has bitten me

My right arm is broken,

And the tree on which I lean is fallen.



Agosi if you go tell them,

Tell Nyidevu, Kpeti, and Kove

That they have done us evil;

Tell them their house is falling

And the trees in the fence

Have been eaten by termites;

That the martels curse them.

Ask them why they idle there

While we suffer, and eat sand.

And the crow and the vulture

Hover always above our broken fences

And strangers walk over our portion.

The Excecutioner's Dream - Kwesi Brew

I dreamt I saw an eye, a pretty eye,

In your hands,

Glittering, wet and sickening;

Like a dull onyx set in a crown of throns,

I did not know you were dead

when you dropped it in my lap.

what horrors of human sacrifice

Have you seen, executioner?

What agonies of tortured men

Who sat through nights and nights of pain;

Tongue tied by the wicked sappor;

Gazing at you with hot imploring eyes?

These white lilies tossed their little heads

then In the moon-steeped ponds;

There was bouncing gaiety in the crisp chirping

Of the cricket in the undergrowth,

And as the surf-boats splintered the waves

I saw the rainbow in your eyes

And the flash of your teeth;

As each crystal shone,

I saw sitting hand in hand with melancholy

A little sunny child

Playing at marbles with husks of fallen stars,

Horrors were your flowers then, the bright red bougainvilled.

They delighted you.

Why do you now weep

And offer me this little gift

Of a dull onyx set in a crown of throns?

@Muki

You did The Excecutioner's Dream too??
Maynne, that was my favourite poem.

Just mention 'Imagery' and you'll get an A

Lest We Should Be The Last - Kwesi Brew

Lest we should be the last

To appear before you

We left our corn in the barn

And unprepared we followed

The winding way to our hut

Our children begged for water

From the woman bearing golden gourds

On their heads

And laughing on their way from the well

But we did not stop,

Knowing that in your presence


Our hunger would be banished

And our thirst assuaged

By the flowing milk of our words

Now we have come to you

And are amazed to find

Those you have loved and respected

Mock you to your face

see Eldee wan turn poet by force.

chamotex:

see Eldee wan turn poet by force.

Oya . . . go back to Sexuality Section.
This is for mature minds

eldee:

@Muki

You did The Excecutioner's Dream too??
Maynne, that was my favourite poem.

Just mention 'Imagery' and you'll get an A

i love the poem, very deep
we used to pick out stuff stanza by stanza mehn
it is a powerful poem .

Tanx man, I have saved the page! i THINK J.P. Clark's Abiku is light years ahead Soyinka's. What you say? But its all perspective though.

Lol. . .All of a sudden, everyone appreciates African Literature.

^
Just 'cause people didnt post/vist here often does not in any way imply that they do not appreciate African literature.

Dimka 76:

Tanx man, I have saved the page! i THINK J.P. Clark's Abiku is light years ahead Soyinka's. What you say? But its all perspective though.

On the surface . . . but if really look inside and forget J.P Clark's use of enjambment, you'll see how Soyinka actually told a better story.
While J.P Clark was just looking at it from the point of view of the human passer-by advocating for the mother, Soyinka more like fights the case of the Abiku child.

It's more interesting to see his explanation for why Abiku actually likes to die . . .'Once and the repeated time, ageless'. Soyinka's Abiku is egoistic and even tells them about his superhuman abilities. I kinda prefer the super-hero Abiku not J.P Clark's suffering one.

semid4lyfe:

Lol. . .All of a sudden, everyone appreciates African Literature.

Yeah . . . I think it's because the Government gave us money for posting on the thread.

Please someone help me on this lyrics- I cant even remember the Poet, But its from the book "West African Verse"

"what time of night its is, I do not know except like some fish, dope out of the ocean, " bla bla bla. I need a full lines. appreciating a response. Thanks.

I wish I could get to buy a copy of West African Verse.

@Lannre

That's Night rain by J.P Clark