THE POEM BOOK

WEST AFRICAN LYRICAL POETS: J.P. CLARK & LENRIE PETERS
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J. P. CLARK
Abiku
 
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 floods 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.

__________

TPB's notes:See a blog review of this poem: https://afrilingual.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/abiku-john-pepper-clark/

LENRIE PETERS
We Have Come Home

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.

__________

TPB's notes: See a blog review of this poem: https://afrilingual.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/we-have-come-home-lenrie-peters/

J. P. CLARK
Olokun

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.

__________
TPB's notes: See a blogger's review of this poem: http://rukhaya.com/poetry-analysis-john-pepper-clarks-olokun/

LENRIE PETERS
Homecoming

The present reigned supreme
Like the shallow floods over the gutters
Over the raw paths where we had been,
The house with the shutters.
Too strange the sudden change
Of the times we buried when we left
The times before we had properly arranged
The memories that we kept.
Our sapless roots have fed
The wind-swept seedlings of another age.
Luxuriant weeds have grown where we led
The Virgins to the water’s edge.
There at the edge of the town
Just by the burial ground
Stands the house without a shadow
Lived in by new skeletons.
That is all that is left
To greet us on the homecoming
After we have paced the world
And longed for returning.

__________
TPB's notes: See a student paper on Lenrie Peters' poetry: http://nurt9jageneral.blogspot.ca/2014/12/theme-and-style-in-lenrie-peters-poetry.html