our Obi Nwakanma belongs to a generation of younger Nige- rian poets, particularly the clique within it which models its work on the poetry of first generation Nigerian poet, Christopher Okigbo, slain during the Nigerian Civil War Nwankanma has edited the literary pages of the Lagos Vanguard newspaper for over a decade. A STRAW IN THE LIGHT THE LOOP of the rope is the sign of the road Whoever walks among the stalks of the corn. Will hear the rustling of the wind ... The loop of the rope is The sign... The sign of the darkening road. The ears which listen which clutch to this fevered moment Renews a world and several worlds after it: Ebenebe is the bearer of tales, yet he bared His throat to the glint of famished steel: He said: 'how can I sit and preen about the sky. When the clouds are heavy with rain?' He chose the death of the pagan Ebenebe... He sang and there was none to listen Ebenebe... Ebenebe... He chose death, the death of the pagan Ebenebe... And all the waters of creation flowed downhill at his funeral Among them, the greying leopard. Pounced, he did, upon the road, where the signs multiply: The loop of the rope is the sign of the greying road: Yesterday we mourned the death of the Elephant Today, we have cleared the path for a new throne: The sun crowns the hills, laughing The drums wander into the orbit tremulous... Between I. and the smouldering sea. the rope becomes Naked at midnight and the straw in the light Burning bright until nothing is left: We saw the groom approach. And on the face of the bride was reproach For we who had kept the vigil must utter a mouthful: He screamed and the world merely grinned But the drums wander into the world quaking... Ebenebe... He shook the entrails of the river Ebenebe... He carried the offid and drowned it in the rainbow And they are sauntering into the sun, the exiles. Willing the drums speak With terrified voices Rousing the dead, from their long dreams and their crumbling < African Quarterly on the *TS> graves: The exiles return to their places, after strange gods, dancing to the drums After their flights into several kingdoms: Whoever says the sea is dry Let him dare a step: the exiles return to the land Wearing amulets... For it is the play of dogs: each one leans on one and the world Flows, incessant like the river... But we who know say: the loop of the rope is the sign of the beaten path. CALL ME SPIRIT-CHILD ( For Wole Soyinka at 60) CALL ME spirit child he says and he answers baring his face to the flaming razor shuddering at the mouth of the gourd ... He is my kinsman who straddles the rainbow where we roamed in unbroken cycles: The froth of the wine speaks loudest for the medicinal leaf bound hand and feet by the oracles the mystic circuit was broken Waste not age was the grey imminence which saddened the ripest fruit And he would tie his life taut on a stake and let the flowering of rebellion sprout as though from a seedling We mined the temple that season when the locusts his strange kinsmen ate the fields fatally His road devoured the flights of twilight the forest became redolent with spirit And blinded by truth he uttered prophecy 'this past will devour the future the flutes will grow silent awed by chaos...' Even as the hills age so the sea which grows deeper and deeper still THE LAST LIGHT (For Sean Devereux. who died in Somalia) Plumes ... millions and millions of plumes... The finest hour, steals the last light away, leaves footprints libe memories etched on ancient rocks,... And there quivered in the pale monodies of the sky libe a nameless anthem, like some bunting of wild lilies savouring solitude... And beyond them a shepherd, spreading the word of peace Where man and beast once lived, until bullets began to sprout libe cauliflowers... This laughter rises from children - who seeb from the sun his last lighted torch... Here lies the spent brambles of the world: Here lies with a scar in his heart the wild flute singing singing, and singing till he tears became banished. Above his palace of native earth - The world flutters like a flag But will his wild laughters Gather room? < African Quarterly on the /4mxV013@Nol> <72> TO THE LEAVE TURNING 1 I once stood without pride without knowledge or consent at your sunken marble altar: There were words that had no meaning, but lovely. There was the suicide note floating from the deep river; the blurred constrictions the blood ceremony of innocence pledging love- The sense of the stars clinging to heaven the milfeyway, where I rode astride the starts- I want to feel nothing else but the breath of the sea; which makes me so chaste, to feel the eye inside the sun glass, sipping ginger ice cold, observant a hat across the lids, slightly amused wondrous; as if the day has just broken: I want to see the leaf turn slightly the water echoing the drums the fast- paced conga; the captive from a past age. the lens capturing nothing - nothing at all: at all the nothing that a closed eye could see: Is it just the mystery, woman? Is that all to it? Is it all of it - in the huge open binocular which traces the violent fall, not quite the fall of the leaf - I say. 1 want to hear the silent of the leaf: to see it turn, to wave a good-bye to understand why- why we locked the smile in the chestnut, why the beds which once created in pleasure seem now so utterly desolate to feel the world pause, as the dew fall upon the lips, upon the eyes that once saw inside... To watch each footstep leading from Dan to beersheeba; pause at the stone step. These words are not merely invocation they are part of revelation They are words which fill, as should be filled wombs constrained and breathless, as should be willed - webs of an ancient life detouring the earth. to feel one last touch... Without hands tracing the bitter sweat of an erection. something so momentous may never have been fathomed: But what prevails? A scant glance at my trembling arches? That measure me in the hallowed shadow of the silver-crowned peak of ancient mountains, where deities reside? What prevails is a question... Without hands, without the figures engraved to make them whole. To mask the trembling urge 1 sign the cross: B@Nol> <73> O holy mother, my worn chasuble is aflame with lust... O holy mother Without hands that cares the pain - my soul is lost to beauty! What prevails?. What truly avails the spirit in that age When no answers strain forward when silence is all I hear. NADIA Marrabech: the grey hairs Atlas, streabs of light of years. libe truth accompanied by a body guard. It is not war; the fast tumble is no war. Nadia, Two pendants, each of hearts, and the silvery locb lashed unto time: Is no war: but the travesty of distance, and this moment, a full breast glistening out of the moon, the darkened streets and hooded, libe the lawless, stranger or way farer: It is the pod streabing with milb, smelt so close, it vanishes. libe the gecbo abandoning her tail.