Tade Akin Aina

 
(from the ongoing collection, The Wanderer’s Pulse)

Dakar

Here all the Signares of Saint Louis
a home true, theirs all theirs, finally found.
Stomping their swagger to rhythms natural
that with silver-blue swirling sea waves, winds
dry and gritty crackling from the desert north
give you the many Gods, deities and Mammon
migrating from Rome, Mecca, Touba, Kaolack.
Love, passion, beauty, noise and arguments here
choreographed in troupes that artfully waltz
Cheikh Anta Diop’s imagined Egypt, worlds made
in heritage to the race’s proud bloodline
that keep this city confident, singing, dancing,
thinking, remaking the lonely defiant philosophy
that define and redefine our continent
defying the dirt, dust, dross, din of overwhelming
poverty, want, disease while overflowing with hope.
Here, freedom’s muscles in elegance flex
Here, stories in coral beads are told:
Beads of prayers tell our lives
Beads of sweat glisten our brows
Beads of honor crown our heads
Beads of beauty jiggle our waist
Beads of pride adorn our ankles.

Deadlines

Despair, the Lagos mob’s necklace
cruel, my chest, weight invisible
press down. In gasoline sweat
my being drenched, day time nightmare,
strange ghosts and demons my inner
self haunt as with deadlines I battle
spinning my creative lines dead, unburied,
their paths woven in my creation famine,
shuttles of fixated endless refinements
in this cold land of summers’ unbearable
heat that my brain fries, my day drains,
but sure I am that Skye’s commission in due
time will be finished, my salvation without
an army certain, my promise to redeem true.

Kampala

Pearl waist beads on a maiden nation,
Your hills dance in graceful slow motion
To winds and clouds that gently caress
Valleys of banana groves on shores of the Great Lake.
On red soil memory mounds you ponder the many
Stories, sad and sweet, of empires and kingdoms
Buried in blood and gore on hands and hearts
Of kings, pretend emperors, freedom fighters turned landlords.
Backs bent with weights of guilt, grunts of abomination
Unmentionable in the tongues of the deities and ancestors,
Your spirits groan under alien traditions imposed, a lineage birthed by
Lord Lugard with too many present day’s strutting heirs.
Your national spirit struggle as it reenact martyrdom across generations
Reclaiming shrines for saints of power, faith and want.
Home of the red earth, abused, you thrive, never giving up,
Your maternal pride solid, receiving on your bosom child, woman and man,
Wounded, tired, mutilated in body, soul and mind,
Their cruel cuts you heal, thirsty souls from endless journeys you water.
Hope and forgiveness deep in scarred hearts you again inscribe.
Child bride nation, Spirit mother, pain and pleasure you equally bear
Gathering your children many, saints, sick and wayward to your bosom.

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