1.
Spirit here that reignest!
Spirit here that painest!
Spirit here that burneth!
Spirit here that mourneth!
Spirit! I bow
My forehead low,
Enshaded with thy pinions!
Spirit! I look
All passion struck,
Into thy pale dominions!
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
I went into a public-‘ouse to get a pint o’ beer,
The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here.”
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:
O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
But it’s “Thank you,
Heigho for a glass, heigho for a lass,
A drink and a kiss, I leave you;
Heigho for a friend that sticks till the end —
Good-bye, my lass, don’t you grieve you.
Hurrah for a song that is not too long,
With a jolly roaring chorus,
While our cans beat time to the ringing rhyme
Till the ceiling cracks up
Da Yanhe, is my wet nurse.
Her name is the name of her village where she was born,
She is a childbride,
Da Yanhe, is my wet nurse.
I am a landlord’s son;
I am also Da Yanhe’s son
Who has brought me up by breastfeeding me.
Da Yanhe raises her family by raising me,
And I have been raised by
Fear no more the heat o’ the sun;
Nor the furious winter’s rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages;
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney sweepers come to dust.
Fear no more the frown of the great,
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke:
Care no more to clothe and eat;
In the beginning
God made the earth,
After that he took two stones and made them into
Sun and Moon.
He further created Rain,
Whose desire was to fall down and cover the earth
with water,
And Darkness, over whom Moon scattered a
basketful of seeds,
Which were the Stars.
There were no people on the earth at first,
So God
St. Agnes’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told
His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
Like pious incense from a censer old,
Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a
Living in slums like leeches,
Wandering about like a bird without shelter.
Area boys, sons of the soil, snail has no blood;
The senior brothers of mendicants,
That is what you call us.
You say we are drinkers, patriotic smokers,
You mean the drunker that speaks mumbo-jumbo
Something in altitude kindles power-thirst
Mere horse-height suffices the emir
Bestowing from rich folds of prodigious turban
Upon crawling peasants in the dust
Rare imperceptible nods enwrapped
In princely boredom.
I too have known
A parching of that primordial palate,
A quickening to manifest life
Of a long recessive appetite.
Though strapped and manacled
That day I commanded from the pinnacle<br
A sentence with “dappled shadow” in it.
Something not sayable
spurting from the morning silence,
secret as a thrush.
The other man, the officer, who brought onions
and wine and sacks of flour,
the major with the swollen knee,
wanted intelligent conversation afterward.
Having no choice, she provided that, too.
Potsdamerplatz, May 1945.
When the first one was through he pried her mouth
I see a beggar in front of me,
Who hardly can walk and can’t even see.
Betrayed by her family for no reason.
Sadness is, what she has for all season.
Crumpled in torn Saree with a blanket around
Beg’s a whole day and eats whatever she finds.
Sadness on her face, a story to tell.
God-given her this, a
i
all that night
I prayed for eyes to see again
whose last sight
had been
a broken bottle
held negligently
in a racist
fist
God give us trees to plant
and hands and eyes to
love them.
Odududu ndufu!
Wardrum, without whose leadership there is fear on the way!
Wardrum, without whose leadership there is fear on the way!
Great spirit, Uduma Olugutu
Great spirit, Okali husband of my great mother, Aru!
Great spirit that dwells in the water at Nde-a-Awa-Ezhiema-Elechi!
Great spirit Umezurike of Ebiri-Ezhi-Akuma!
Great spirit Aqwu Obasi of Ekidi Nde Ofoali!
Great spirit Kaalu
Ah! there exam days
when people near me,
they carefully hear me,
please me in many ways
Ah! there exam days.
My loneliness filled with girls and boys
my introvercy gone for joys,
In after-time, a sage of mickle lore
Yclep’d Typographus, the Giant took,
And did refit his limbs as heretofore,
And made him read in many a learned book,
And into many a lively legend look;
Thereby in goodly themes so training him,
That all his brutishness he quite forsook,
When, meeting Artegall and Talus grim,
Away from the bustling life.
A joy grows in a jar.
Chaos mind, disturbed life.
Hope grows in a Jar.
Many big ideas, big dreams insight.
A dream grows in a Jar.
Where others are planning to soar high in the sky.
This is hard to believe
Better believe it because it is the truth of life
That water has no hands
But drag sands with arms of energy
And ripples created far away on the airwaves
Became the love doctor
That fall in love with the heart of man.
I am handsome, craving
But cannot stitch woo on a lady’s ears
Those
Holy Father in heaven,
My parents have done enough,
But if I should think about their struggle and luckless,
It seems I should not grow old again.
They have till the soil,
It seems the earth is annoyed with them,
They have gone into the sea,
It seems the brackish sea has porous their net.
Dim vales—and shadowy floods—
And cloudy-looking woods,
Whose forms we can’t discover
For the tears that drip all over:
Huge moons there wax and wane—
Again—again—again—
Every moment of the night—
Forever changing places—
And they put out the star-light
With the breath from their pale faces.
