Oke’s Musings: Poetry, People and Places

Tag: Nigeria

  • The City: An Elegy

    They call her the Peoples Elephant Yet it sits sprawled like a mad man Eating the debris of waste for nutrients Driving the cattle mad so they scatter Breaking the peoples will and mind Into a million strange atoms So that the Elephant is left in Ant pieces The Sewages are dirty, messed up The…

  • Sunday light in Uyo

    Arise and shine Arise and shine This morning brings to us Fresh dry airs, severely cold With dew strong like smoke Rushing thru the glass window In a fresh bust of race, To the green fields of meadow Strange paintings the dew draw Throwing up busts of free air One of sweet vitality and life…

  • A son of the hamlet

    I was born and bred in a big city But nought interests me More than a quiet life Which the serene hamlets give I was the king of the jungle With maidservants and menservants And a great sand house Filled with sand-made yams Commanding the mango fruit To fall for my noon delight And the…

  • Africa’s poetale

    Africa is a budding cocoon A shy, fragile and cute butterfly With shaky wings meant to fly Living, in a desperate world Africa is the gigantic tree That grows by the side of the river Shielding the lengths of the forests And feeding the lifes around it Africa is a mountain highly peaked With white…

  • Come this thunder, 1967

    Come this thunder When the nights glitter with explosions The resemblance of fire-cracker carnivals And as the rattling for supremacy Is heard from heartless machine guns Spewing the seeds of destruction Upon unfortunate children and men ‘Kwaa-pu kwaa-pu kwaa-pu, unu dum!’ ‘Leave here,’ the emissaries of death say Flying limbs, headless bodies and chaos Destruction…

  • Aba, The Enyimba City

    See the roofs on houses, dust cladded And the palm trees stuck to the ground Like a majestic knight standing guard The streets wind up the road Ogbor sits on a hill up the vale The ancient city and fortress Once on the river flowing fast Washing strange mens nakedness The harmattan brings dusts upon…

  • Umudinja

    Tonight, reminds me of thee motherland Thee land of great forests and men! Of streams and vast farmlands! The home of the Cashew and the Palm The scenery of Mother Natures beauty A painted work, done only by Nature herself Great hills and vales surround thee Oh how love flows when you are remembered All…

  • Umukwu: In Cold Mornings

    It is a very cold morning As dew descend upon this land From those ancient hills Standing like medieval knights Protecting, shielding and guiding the hamlet Quiet, queer and strange But full of amazing life When you feel the cold Touched by the tip of a grass leave On your way to the stream Or…

  • Harmattan

    The days are made beautiful with your glorious appearance But when the sun rises up the clouds, the warmth is taken And for men, faces become a caricature of disgust upon the mirror In the morning even before the Suns rising The firmament and the pathways is filled with mists The track to the stream…

  • The Stream, Kpere

    Then I heard your drift, Flowing through the forest Washing men’s nakedness… When there was love When on the stream side I sit Trying to peer thru the tall shrubs I saw the white clouds Clear as the sweet spring water Leaping in joyful haste, In boundless ecstasy Washing the little rocks Pulling pebbles along…

  • Ovim, my homeland

    To Thee My homeland My mothers birthplace The land of the brave Ovim- land of strength What baffles me most, Through this bewildered mind The uncertainty of what Must be thought and said Is the serenity about thee I speak of you with pride With love, with joy Thee Ovim, my Father land A beauty…

  • Nigeria

    In the morning, the sun rises Above the horizons and cliffs And on the smiling faces on the farms The hope rises with the sun As the children roll out their bicycles To the tanned fields of the hamlet Followed by their pets, puppies and kittens A proud cloud draws a huge smile And on…