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.