Kwara

by Adebiyi Olusolape

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For the late Dr. Oluṣola Saraki, Mallam Adamu Ciroma, British Leyland and 285,000 naira in bribes.

I

A river is a mobile culture which always is passing

but which always truly is a fixture that

always truly is passing

 

All rivers run

dry

all rivers run to the sea

 

Yet in a day measured in millennia

and in millenniums the sum of which are twenty-four

 

How many rivers have run dry

of tears

of sop of sand of sun?

 

And into this river dove Heraclitus

but not this one

surely not this one

 

Or how else

could he cross the Rubicon?

 

II

Şango and Oya went up the hill

Şango and Oya had a big fall

out

 

Şango fell and broke his crown

Ọya floats all the way down

leaching stones and catching sunlight

all the way down

 

She flows and flows and flows

Ọya she flows all the way to sea

 

When she is captured in the creeping desert

when she follows her old course no more

Ọya the treacherous course

many who are thirsty come to her banks

they never leave

their skulls remain to grin at the sky

 

III

Ọya

she has known long the sting of neglect

those who worship her—you know

she smarts

it is mere pretense

a storm in a tea cup

drink her if you may

drink her to the lees

 

Ọya

she cannot be sipped

a diaphanous boubou

she is nothing

but a smile

and those breasts

 

IV

She wore fine taffeta

the color of sand

 

Ọya lavender of night

inordinate raptures at dawn

Ọya mother and son

the first and the ninth

of the rock

the leeward side—sole port in every storm

 

V

I know no language truer than touch

yet you

performed a falsehood in it

 

A young river bears an old memory

of ancient days

when she was a highway

and Kakanda vehicles plied her streets

 

What vessel bore Yahweh’s witnesses to their shipwreck?

what three ships bore Schön and the lost children?

 

Did trembling horses not bear Fulani

and that ferocious Kurunmi

 

To the headwaters at Oṣogun

whence a river of flesh flowed

running to the sea

riverrun run run to the sea

and young Ajayi was a mobile

Langrangian particle in a dark flood

 

All young rivers are born with their faces to the earth

they forget only so they can recall

anamnesis in that endless cycle of return

Riverwoman Oṣaala will watch over your child

Oṣaala will lose count of no cycle of return

Oṣaala will preserve a fixity

that Eulerian point of view

 

VI

There is a place you will find me

where hoary heads sit

sifting the sum of their years

 

Many sands has Time

the sum of it is naught

 

You will find me

where old maids renew youth

Time was when we were young

 

Speak no evil of the dead

or the ones that have gone ahead

Time was when we were young

when Oṣogun was in Isẹyin

and Ilọrin met her there

 

VII

There is a crossroad

where the river meets the road

 

The river was first in haste to behead the road

of the pair

the road was not second

in decollating the other

 

When the river met the road

the twain split each other into four

Oyigiyigi is eternal

Oyigiyigi does not die

we have become Oyigiyigi we are immortal

 

And there is a river of song that ceases not to sing

 

VIII

There is a distant unity

an evening and day were the first day

 

And in the distance of years

there would be a knoll of skulls

beyond that the world would end

 

But before then

would that the horseman

his trembling pallid horse rode

and that blood fell into the sky

 

IX

And so came another species

which made broad ways where once she flowed

And their roads when they were old

had no potholes.

 

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Adebiyi writes from Ibadan.