Four Poems
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 February 2024
Summary
AMBITIOUS
Knocking down and holding up
Loving here and hating there
Taking this and giving that
Whether bind or whether tear
Scurry scurry goes the rat
All in a hurry man keeps up
For you the obscure pumping heart
Ambition
Goldie treasures all for you
Think no leisure but your bread?
Can't you see the apian way?
All in that poor little head
That has to lead to goodies’ way
See how it is killing you
You that craved the path you led
Ambitious
Sometimes it's all so very vague
How alien turns the haven you draft?
How brutally they consume you?
What you create, your little craft
Will consume or harbour you?
You feel the ache, it's like a plague
Of experience you have a raft
Content !
SHAKE IT OFF
What's it?
Sour through the bone
What bone?
The big N’s, queen of the savannah's spinal
Say it is a cancer
Gazelles gadding about the game
Disobeying their curfew at self expense
Buffalos beckoned by butchers
Losing sleep on account of the lords
Rein doe rocking their rear
Regurgitating what predators ate
Greyhounds guarding the ghouls in grunt
Standing to get their pat, a bone and a kick
Falcons fresh from Florence
Egging on their young through their avian routes
Calves come from common castrate camps
Groveling in companies for seeds of own testes
Night birds in nests of nestlings unknown
Neglecting nigh their forts, these they pick to foster-sit
Capons careful to be called cubs
Filling up their cranky core with crying bloods
Ducks daring not to shake as if they are of rubber
Making them stores of stolen grains to earn some plume
And these, and those, and name it.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- African Literature in African Languages , pp. 100 - 103Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2023