All colours are beautiful
Abiodun Adekoya
What colour is this?
Colour white
As white as snow
What colour is this?
Colour black
As black as charcoal
What colour is this?
Colour blue
As blue as the ocean
What colour is this?
Colour white
As white as snow
What colour is this?
Colour black
As black as charcoal
What colour is this?
Colour blue
As blue as the ocean
My apparition rose from the fall of lead,
Declared, ‘I am a civilian.’ It only served
To aggravate your fright. For how could I
Have risen, a being of this world, in that hour
Of impartial death! And I thought also: nor is
Your quarrel of this world.
You stood still
For both eternities, and oh I heard the lesson
Of
He sleeps where he would wish, in easy call,
Here in a primrose nook beside the wall.
And near the gate, that he may guard us all
Even in death, our faithful seneschal.
I do not think the courteous Cherubim
Will chide him if he waits, nor Seraphim
Summon him hence till we may follow him
Who knew no heav’n
A son of Netherland art thou,
Unsoil’d by foreign chains?
Doth love of country light thy brow,
And circle through thy veins?
Then raise with us the anthem proud,
A glorious theme we sing;
Who would not swell the strain aloud
For native land and King!
And sweetly doth each thrilling tone
Of patriot pæans rise,
Like incense, wafted to the
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.
This morning a cat—bright orange—pawing at the one patch of new grass in the sand-and tanbark-colored leaves.
And last night the sapphire of the raccoon’s eyes in the beam of the flashlight.
He was climbing a tree beside the house, trying to get onto the porch, I think, for a wad of oatmeal
Simmered in cider from the bottom of the
The Earth, a leper foul with scars and sores,
Lay naked in most hideous plight,
When Boreas flung down his ermined robe
And hid from men the sick’ning sight!
Lo where December’s snows the deepest lay,
The wheat of June the brightest gleams;
E’en so deep sorrows when with patience borne,
Oft-times nurse joys beyond our dreams!
Born for a reason and learning are not the same.
Putting tradition aside for one day’s pain is not good.
Hot pepper of the Game!
The brave sat down and thought.
He said, “Kumba! Beloved Kumba!”
“Yes?” she replied.
She said, “Kambili the Hunter, Kambili Sanafila!
The man-eating lion is going to die in Jimini.
I will go to the hair-dressing
Sleep, sleep, little one, close your eyes, sleep,
little one!
The night comes down, the hour has comes,
tomorrow it will be day.
Sleep, sleep, little one! On your closed eyes day
has fled
You are warm. You have drunk, sleep, sleep,
little one!
Sleep, tomorrow you will be big, you will be
strong.
Sleep, tomorrow you will take the
Shadows on the wall
Noises down the hall
Life doesn’t frighten me at all
Bad dogs barking loud
Big ghosts in a cloud
Life doesn’t frighten me at all
Mean old Mother Goose
Lions on the loose
They don’t frighten me at all
1.
Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
The transient pleasures as a vision seem,
And yet we think the greatest pain’s to die.
2.
How strange it is that man on earth should roam,
And lead a life of woe, but not forsake
I am an honest African,
Do not think of me otherwise.
I am not of mixed lineage,
Neither on my mother’s nor father’s side.
However fine other lineage may be,
I am not sprung from it.
I am no Arab nor a European,
I am not of Indian descent.
Think not, Lothario, while I view
The bright expression of thy face,
And on thy cheek of crimson hue
Emotion’s varying beauties trace,
That in my heart one feeling dwells,
But what the coldest must approve,
Nor think my conscious bosom swells
With aught resembling secret love.
No….still these eyes can fix on thine,
Nor fear their keenest glance to meet;
And
Fair river! in thy bright, clear flow
Of crystal, wandering water,
Thou art an emblem of the glow
Of beauty — the unhidden heart —
The playful maziness of art
In old Alberto’s daughter;
But when within thy wave she looks —
Which glistens then, and trembles —
Why, then, the prettiest of brooks
When that rich soul which to her heaven is gone,
Whom all do celebrate, who know they have one
(For who is sure he hath a soul, unless
It see, and judge, and follow worthiness,
And by deeds praise it? He who doth not this,
May lodge an inmate soul, but ’tis not his)
When that queen ended here her
The tune of Adowa
Drives Yaa to frenzy,
Her legs alternate–
they close,
they cross,
they open,
they part.
Oh, what a dancer,
The dancer of Adowa.
Her trunk goes–
to the left,
to the right,
to the front,
to the back.
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;
It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
Often ’tis in such gentle temper found
That scarcely will the very smallest shell
Be mov’d for days from whence it sometime fell,
When last the winds of heaven were unbound.
Oh
Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire!
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon’s sphere;
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green;
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
If I were a bird,
I would also use my coarse throat to sing:
This land stricken by storms,
These rivers forever torrential with our indignation,
This wind ceaselessly blowing in rages,
And that incomparably mild dawn coming from the forest…
—Then I die,
Decomposed into the land even with my feathers.