Niyi Osundare: “Who’s Afraid of The Proverb?”

Photograph from 2005 of a fragment of The Berlin Wall (1961-1989)…Osundare’s poems, Checkpoint Charlie and Berlin 1884/5, treat “The Wall” “falling” with multiple ironies regarding History…

Niyi Osundare
(born 1947, Ikere-Ekiti, Nigeria)
. . .
The Large Heart
.
When last did you say hello to a neighbour
Or share with him the early pick
From your backyard garden?
.
When last did you lower that fence
Trim those thorny hedges
And throw a handshake across their forbidding top?
.
When last did you stop in the street
To crack a joke or savour banter
And spread the healing magic of laughter?
.
When last did you say “Bless you”
To soothe a sneeze, or “Take care”
To one who has stubbed a toe?
.
When last did you offer a meal
To a hungry stranger and command
The water from your well to was his feet?
.
When last did your dough of friendship
Rise in the furnace of the sun,
Your milk of mercy in the pitcher of the moon?
.
When last did you think about your fatter calf
And the skinny swansong of the begging bowl
The sin-phony of your silk, and the scream of the national rag?
.
When last did you throw a bridge
Across the gulf and sew little stars in the darkness of forgotten skies?
.
When last did you listen to the wails of the forest
Arrest the savagery of a wanton machete
Enlist in the Salvation Army of Earth and Sky?
.
A genuine smile is longer than a mile,
A large heart is not a medical problem.

. . .

Letter from The Editor
(who once lectured a Nigerian poet of my acquaintance on the virtues of “traveling poems”)
.
Thank you for your poems
Our Editorial Board was tremendously amused –
.
– but there are too many foreign places
In your verse, too many African names
Too strange for the sophisticated glide
.
Of our English tongue.
(You see, we prefer words which pose
No threat to the dental health of our readers.)
.
Too many matters better left to politics – and politicians;
What does poetry have to do
With those who rule us – or those we rule?
.
– with the whimsical temper of stocks and shares,
The cost of a ream of paper
Or the price of bread in the marketplace…?
.
Too strong, your feelings; too sharp
The thrust of your tropes…
We are a people tuned to tamer truths.
.
So: why not bend your wit to the rule of rhyme,
The supremacy of nothingness,
The post-modernity of silence…?
.
Send us poems unclogged by human kindness…
Send us poems that travel.
. . .

Checkpoint Charlie
.
A tortured rainbow:
mosaic of broken epics
.
Quarry for museum hounds
and undertakers for private temples.
.
Here, now, in the dust and concrete splinters,
The Wall
which grew so tall, so wide,
.
It cut the sky in two:
the sun rose on one side, set in the other.
.
Market forces howled and swaggered on one side,
the whimsical Babel of stocks ‘n shares.
.
On the other, human Need wrestled with human Greed
– culture with chaos, mercy with monopoly.
.
Then, a smiling comrade dropped the egg…
and the world couldn’t gather the shattered pieces…
.
Our guide told the story from his own side,
as I took another look at the boy
who sold “The Wall” for tourist dollars.
.
“Come buy History, come buy History!”, he screamed
again, his voice vanishing into the late morning traffic.
. . .
Berlin 1884/5
“Come buy History, come buy History!”
.
I looked round for vendors of my own past,
For that Hall where, many seasons ago,
My Continent was sliced up like a juicy mango…
.
…to quell the quarrel of alien siblings.
I looked for the knife which exacted the rift
– how many kingdoms held its handle?
.
The bravado of its blade,
The wisdom of potentates who put
The map before the man,
.
The cruel arrogance of empire,
Of kings/queens who laid claim to rivers, to mountains,
To other peoples and other gods, and other histories…
.
And they who went to bed under one conqueror’s flag,
Waking up beneath the shadows of another,
Their ears twisted to the syllable of alien tongues.
.
Gunboats,
Territories of terror…
.
Oh, that map – that knife, those contending emperors,
These bleeding scars in a Continent’s soul,
Insisting on a millennium of healing.
. . .
Skinsong 3
.
And pale shadows descend
Upon our noon of bronze:
“You have no past,” they say,
“Your history is darkness
Which never knew the faintest sun.”
.
“Tell us another lie,”
Retort the griots,
About trees without roots,
Rivers without sources,
Because without whys.
Tell us
About the bridge
Which looks forward
Without a backward glance.
. . .
End of History
.
Old truths tumble down
In sunrise cities;
A hated wall dissolves
In a haze of fireworks
And gathering shadows.
.
Old truths tumble
– On the compost of newer Truths.
.
And sunset pundits swear
They have climbed the mountain,
And seen History’s grave
In the elbow of misty valleys.
.
Pundits say
The sun has suddenly stopped
Its limbless journey across the sky.
.
Today I look History
In the face,
His/Her brow a taut membrane
Of inexhaustible riddles.
.
Today I look History
In the face,
And I remember the child in the tale
Who touched the elephant’s tale,
Vowing he had seen everything
About the giant in the forest.
. . .
Testament 1
.
I hold this shred of eternity
in my hand
pulsating like a purple pledge;
falling leaves twirl in the soundless wind
the sun brightens up its corner of the day.
.
The afternoon bell has come and gone,
burying rapid moments in decibels of silence.
.
I hold this shred of eternity
in my hand.
.
I sew that thread
into the memory of the sky
where clouds are cottonballs
waiting for the lyric of the loom.
.
I am a poet:
my memory is a house
of many rooms.
. . .
Who’s Afraid of The Proverb?
(To go with the song:
Owe lesin oro
Oro lesin owe
Toro ba sonu
Owe la fi nwa *)
.
I
.
Who’s afraid of the proverb
of the eloquent kernel in the pod
of silent moons?
.
Who’s afraid of the proverb
of the kola in the mouth of the mountain,
giant udder of the cow of the sky?
.
Who’s afraid of the proverb
of the drum which left its echoes
in the auricles of leaping streets?
.
Who’s afraid of the proverb
of the river which traverses the earth
in limbless intensity?
.
Who’s afraid of the proverb
of the sonic feathers of metaphors in flight,
the lift and thrust of impossible fancies?
.
Who’s afraid of the proverb
of the wind’s truthful lyre,
melodic thrum of Desire’s fingers?
,
Who’s afraid of the proverb
of the shortest distance
between many truths?
.
II
.
Who’s afraid of the proverb
who’s so fat on the Lactogen of the moment,
has lost all hint of the milk of dawn?
.
Who’s afraid of the proverb
stalking minnows in brackish waters,
scared of the shoals which surprise the deep?
.
Who’s afraid of the proverb,
anonymous spaces
in the abyss of the sky?
.
Who’s afraid of the proverb,
first clay in the furnace
of chilling fires?
.
Who’s afraid of the proverb,
silent salt in the feast
of delicious words?
.
Who’s afraid of the proverb?
Who’s afraid of
m-e-m-o-r-y?
. . .
* The proverb is the horse of the word.
The word is the horse of the proverb
When the word is lost
It is the proverb we use for finding it.

. . . . .

To read Osundare’s poem “Metamorphosis”, click on the following ZP link:

https://zocalopoets.com/2012/04/11/niyi-osundare-alupayida-metamorphosis/