THE POEM BOOK

THREE CLASSIC AFRICAN POEMS
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J P CLARK
Night Rain

What time of night it is
I do not know
Except that like some fish
Doped out of the deep
I have bobbed up bellywise
From stream of sleep
And no cocks crow.
It is drumming hard here
And I suppose everywhere
Droning with insistent ardour upon
Our roof thatch and shed
And thro' sheaves slit open
To lightning and rafters
I cannot quite make out overhead
Great water drops are dribbling
Falling like orange or mango
Fruits showered forth in the wind
Or perhaps I should say so
Much like beads I could in prayer tell
Them on string as they break
In wooden bowls and earthenware
Mother is busy now deploying
About our roomlet and floor.
Although it is so dark
I know her practiced step as
She moves her bins, bags and vats
Out of the run of water
That like ants gain possession
Of the floor. Do not tremble then
But turns, brothers, turn upon your side
Of the loosening mats
To where the others lie.
We have drunk tonight of a spell
Deeper than the owl's or hat's
That wet of wings may not fly
Bedraggled up on the iroko, they stand
Emptied of hearts, and
Therefore will not stir, no, not
Even at dawn for then
They must scurry in to hide.
So let us roll over on our back
And again roll to the beat
Of drumming all over the land
And under its ample soothing hand
Joined to that of the sea
We will settle to sleep of the innocent and free.

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TPB's notes: John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo was born at Kiagbodo, Nigeria in 1935. we don't quite see clark's use of language as african, certainly not in tone. but the imagery consist of objects, like the iroko and the drum, that one could identify as uniquely african. perhaps scholars of these poems have studied what makes or does not make. 

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KWESI BREW
The Mesh

We have come to the cross-roads
And I must either leave or come with you
I lingered over the choice
But in the darkness of my doubt
You lifted the lamp of love
And I saw in your face
The road that I should take

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TPB's notes: found note: "He was born in 1928 at Cape Coast, Ghana, was orphaned at an early age. He had his studies in Ghana. THE MESH is a love poem."

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DENNIS OSADEBAY

Who buys my thoughts

Who buys my thoughts
Buys not a cup of honey
That sweetens every taste;
He buys the throb,
Of Young Africa's soul,
The soul of teeming millions,
Hungry, naked, sick,
Yearning, pleading, waiting.
Who buys my thoughts
Buys not some false pretence
Of oracles and tin gods;
He buys the thoughts
Projected by the mass
Of restless youths who are born
Into deep and clashing cultures,
Sorting, questioning, watching.
Who buys my thoughts
Buys the spirit of the age,
The unquenching fire that smoulders
And smoulders in every living heart
That's true and noble or suffering;
It burns all o'er the earth,
Destroying, chastening, cleansing.

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TPB's notes:  ps: no closure in this poem. poetic device as a function of its subject or failure of form? discuss.