←
→

Niyi Osundare: “Àlùpàyídà” / “Metamorphosis”

Posted: April 11, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: English, Niyi Osundare |Comments Off on Niyi Osundare: “Àlùpàyídà” / “Metamorphosis”

 

Niyi Osundare 

Àlùpàyídà / Metamorphosis

 


I stay very long in the river

And I become a fish

With a head made of coral

And fins which tame the distance

Of billowing depths

*

I stay very long in the fish

And I become a mountain

With a mist-cradled crest

And feet carpeted by grass

Which sweetens dawnbreath with jasmine magic

*

I stay very long on the mountain

And I become a bird

With a net of polyglot straw

And songs which stir the ears

Of slumbering forests

*

I stay very long with the bird

And I become a road

With long dusty eyes

And limbs twining through the bramble

Like precocious pythons

*

I stay very long on the road

And I become a cigarette

Lighted both ends by powerful geysers,

Ash-winged firefly on nights

Of muffled darkness

*

I stay very long with the cigarette

And I become a clown

With a wide, painted face

And a belly stuffed to the brim

With rippling laughters

*

I stay very long with the clown

And I become a sage

With a twinkling beard

And fables which ply the yarn

Of grizzled memories

*

I stay very long in s-i-l-e-n-c-e

I become a Word.

 

 

 

Àlùpàyídà = the Yoruba word for Metamorphosis

_____

 

Niyi Osundare was born in Ikere-Ekiti, Nigeria, in 1947.

He is a poet, dramatist, and university professor,

now teaching in the USA.

Writing under successive dictatorial governments in Nigeria,

Osundare has always been passionate about free speech and

is political as a poet, knowing how very necessary that is in the

contemporary African context.  “To utter is to alter” is his belief;

we must use the power of words.

←
→