Epitaph for the Bully

(far cry from Auden)

When at last he died
Market-women danced in the streets

Instant owambe
Thick as amala
Redolent of gbegiri

Scornful of the new edict
Lawful crowds partied in the streets

Gege in fireworks
Jubilations at Agbeni
Feferities at Foko

Mournful they dared not be-cause
Awful Lamidi held the city to ransom

© Akin Adesokan

• For Chief Lamidi Ariyibi Adedibu, the godfather of Ibadan politics (aka the godfather of Amala politics) - who passed away on 11 June 2008 and according to Muslim rites was buried today, June 12, a not insignificant day in the fight for democracy in Nigeria.
• Read Tade Ipadeola's brilliant essay, 'Adedibully: a dinosaur's last dance' - published in Farafina 12, edited by Akin Adesokan,
• Epitaph for the Bully is used with permission.

Farafina Now

.
Farafina Vol. 12, guest edited by Akin Adesokan, carries on its Letters page a note from the hilariously named Dingwo Normality. You read it and think: someone's having a laugh. Jim McConkey (who writes about Ayi Kwei Armah), Afam Akeh, and Omowunmi Segun (read her story, Homecoming) - are among the contributors. I am also in there, with my review of the film Bamako. As is Tade Ipadeola, who in the essay, Adedibully, casts a critical eye on Lamidi Adedibu, a man who gives a bad name to the term political godfather.
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In the previous edition, guest edited by Petina Gappah (and with contributions from the likes of Darrel Bristow-Bovey, Chris Abani, Kuzhali Manickavel and Tinashe Mushakavanhu) and published before the ethnic violence unleashed after contested elections in Kenya - I spotted this quote, illustrated by a misbehaving monkey. A certain Mrs Njeri expresses concern about rampaging monkeys destroying crops and killing livestock. It wouldn't have seemed possible, but soon, human beings would behave worse than the monkeys...

Incantation

.
Rain does not evade the path of the runnel
Frogs do not decline the call of streams
The sponge will not refuse the voice of the river
Salt will ever heed the glad eyes of the sea…

The needle does not decline a tryst with cloth
The road does not complain at the tread of feet,
When young love meets the moon it blossoms
When eyes meet with beauty the face is glad

Let those who love this land be safe
Let those who hate this land be swallowed
And when the children lift their voices,
Let all of those who hear be glad,
Let all of those who heed rejoice.

II

Glory does not kill the morning
Splendour does not slay sunsets
Love for a child does not kill the mother
The praise of fathers does not kill their sons
When a bride kneels before her groom she's blessed
Whenever a daughter is born we know we shall not die
Whenever a son is given there is joy
Let all the daughters of this land be fruitful
Let all the sons of this land increase
And if from east or west there should be anger
If from north or south there should be rage
Let all the rage and anger dissipate
Like smoke in the breeze
Like dogdream when it comes awake.

III

What words we have spoken let them cleave
What hearts belong to us let them not grieve
Let our words find us prepared
Let all our dreams find us prepared
And our land, our country, our earth
Let them find us ready at our end.

© Tade Ipadeola

• Reproduced with permission.

Facing Kilimanjaro

Tade Ipadeola (right, photographed by this blogger at Terra Kulture, Lagos, on 7th September 2005) placed 2nd in the Muson Poetry Prize 1999 - with his poem, Facing Kilimanjaro...



Facing Kilimanjaro

‘I have something to say I want to say
But it surpasses saying.’
- Kofi Awoonor

I

Hold my hands
Upon this mount of visions,
Hallow this hour hedged
Past haruspications.

The black and blue Nile knit
Purple robes,
To cover this nakedness
So strikingly stark -

Billows blow breathlessly on
The sapped continent…
But we shall rise.
We shall be strong again
We shall not be naked
Again.


II

From these heights I see
Strength
Restored to lands;
And people of the land
Strength from Kibo
Restored.
I’m flushed with light
And from this height
I speak
Peace to troubled turfs
Where I see
The hair on hoary heads.
I see the depths:
Stones of a richer mine
Untouched and unsoiled,
Beckoning, beckoning to me
Richer stones unlaundered
From Kimberly’s belly
All mine
In the savannah sprawls…
I am rich again -
Richer.


III

But vultures also wait
Circling for the death scent
Waiting
For the air to reek
With arbitage

And who are these brethren
Thrusting turgid stones
At one
Another?
What blindness, what darkness!
What blind unseeing!
They close in on us
On blood scent
Because the night has fallen
Yet again…

Low as a lie
The vultures circle,
Scarlet unfurls her bloody mast
She glows at the stench
And swoops
To scoop the entrails
Of gods.


IV

Women bleed milk
For each travelling man
That they may remember the way back
If ever…

In the fields
Maddened men
Slash and slit their brothers

I heard a gurgle
In a trunc-
ated throat
No song.
I see the compound eyes
Of flies and spies
And I hear the women wail.
They wail over wombs
That will not heal
Among women

And I saw them:
Vultures and scarves
Skiing down Alpine slopes,
A host of hopes
In their wine wakes


V

Weep for the waifs,
Cry for the child soldiers

Ghouls caress their infant heads
No homely little cradle beds
Their nascent bloom so soon is shed
Child soldiers…

Weep as they sleep
Wasted infant gunners
Cry.

Somewhere in the heights
A tear trickles
A head
Hangs
A head
Droops.

Mourn the mass of innocence unsung
Time is
Time is not
Past


VI

I mourn the mounds
Of infant flesh
Soaked in damned dreams

I see a sea
Of brine
A sea of wine
So you see
My eyes.

I wait for day
For dreams to sail on streams of light
For children to be innocent again

My longing:
To see birds nest on the trees
The hunters hunting herds in peace
To face the mountain with a cup
To drink the waters at the top…
To climb in peace
Again


VII

Then up to Kibo
To know life
Wrought whole and well
Like the ancients
Of the ancient tribes -
Wachagga
Falasha
Xhosa
Hausa
Yoruba.

To go up with Mandela
The Kabaka
And all of God’s children
Marcus, Martin, Malcolm;
And all of God’s shopped children
Up to Kibo
From distant lands
Turning, returning
To the Fatherland
To Kibo
Facing Kilimanjaro.

© Tade Ipadeola

• Facing Kilimanjaro is taken from The Rain Fardel, Tade Ipadeola's 2nd volume of poetry (Khalam Editions, Ibadan, 2005).
• Reproduced with permission.