The Famished Plain (A Poem)

The sculpted frames crawl, crawl

Into thickets of twine and thistle

The sky’s orange eye peers, pries

On the Iroko’s listless shade

Fallen west

The gorillas’ percussions buried

Beneath the Omele and Gangan’s enchantment

Rhythms splash against the gourd’s back

Shielding the palm wine-drunk ground

Belches savouring the seasoned bones of the Impala

As shadows lost under feet, all

The dial points home; eastwards

The travelling vane of the opponents

Of the mild crimson sun

Heads roll back to homeland banks.

Camels trudge across borderless sands

Like the tortoise’s endless voyage

The village now with silence, domed.

The crown has been immersed in joyful-sorrow

Six feet in the palms of the grave

Plains drunk with the envy of the fiesta

Yearning to inflict yet another monsoon of wails,

A breath of stillness

On the inhabitants’ consciousness

Gbam! The giant white sphere sticks to the dark skies,

A bellow thunders, quakes the ground and seizes the seas.

I am death,

King over the farmlands,

Lord of the famish.

(c) 2005, Olusegun Adekoye