Three Poems

By Rotimi Babatunde

______

Oedipus Rex: The Comedy

 

Daughter…

Listen:

 

Once upon a time

                a cat

                swirled like an iron vortex

               

                whirled

                as it chased around a narrowing spire 

                Curiosity’s tail

 

                But Curiosity, the cat-killer, also swirling

                was stretching for the cat’s tail

 

                was looping around the vortex

                tightening like a noose.

 

A requiem for the strangled cat,

 

(For dawn hangs nude the buried wombs,

the broods of gall and – ah! – screaming wounds).

 

Was I Medusa?

Was I Medusa reaching for a mirror?

 

Daughter, sister…

Listen:

 

But once upon a night

I was the billy goat humping my mum’s rump, our mum’s.

                Until dawn dropped down – a conjurer from the east –

                Scooped up the night with his hat of rays.

                From it the goat jumped out a man – I.

 

So I was Orion.

I was Orion in night’s woods hunting for dawn.

 

The goat was the father of the man.

The man will be father of the god.

 

(For nine lives the cat has,

Nine stairs soaring to the stars.)

 

Have, child, this sacrament – my outplucked eyes.

Use them as spectacles in my memory.

  _________

For the Apo Six, Murdered by the Nigerian Police

 

The Apo Six’s case is not unique –          

Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-judicial Killings

 

The United Nations warns that Nigerians are liable to be murdered young.

At the crowded market (remember, the police is your friend)

With his bloodshot eyes, on your way to school, the gin heavy in his breath

Your close friend, in a bus or by your window, too close for comfort

At the roadblock, his bullet in your skull, the police is your friend

The United Nations warns that Nigerians are liable to be butchered young.

 

The United Nations warns that Nigerians are liable to be hounded dead.

Under the moon the graves are fresh (support your local gunslinger!)

Maybe in the morning – remember, the police is no respecter of persons –

Male or female, it may be dusk (surely, the police is your friend)

Or at noontime, your teeth in the dust, staple meal of the dead

(The earth is a dish and the dish will be cold)

The United Nations warns that Nigerians are liable to be buried young.

 

Strings are useful and the bullet will be sudden (skulls can only smile)

Bolt your windows, bar the doors, the shadow follows always behind you

The young and the old, cop-kill walking, the United Nations warns

(You are always young enough) The blows will be hard and the lead will be hot

You can run but the next town is always Samarra

The United Nations warns (surely, Nigerians are liable to be strangled dead)

At noon or at midnight, in a cell at dawn (remember, the police is your friend)

The United Nations warns that Nigerians are liable to be murdered young.

 

_________

Oxbow Lakes

 

The piercing carelessness of the children’s laughter

seduces us. Should we now abandon our

well-used telescopes for the screening veil?

 

Should the stylites*descend

to solutes for the bazaar –

a vat of thronging mindlessness.

 

(For the oxbows – exiled veering sharply

from the headlong torrents blindly surging –

in still aloofness gaze cyclops-eyed

at a denuded sky: our eyes now saline

with the dredged-up secrets of the earth.)

 

And, siblings of Galileo that we are

can dare spell ‘pope’ with a puny ‘p’,

with hilarious tears can pun the vulgate

to The Vulgar

 

but then are

fragile clingers to a Frisbee earth,

with a shattering monolith for cosmos;

are fleeting yearners for the childhood haziness

and the headlong plunge –

Eden of the unplucked apple.

 

And  still, from the street, the gay

laughter of children in play.