Obododinma Oha

 

 

 Mmanwu in Ascent

 

 The call of the ram horn

Searching the ant holes, mesmerizing

Every knower caught in the Web of words

 

 Mmanwu, of distant truth

Wrapped in the smells of many spells

Bursting with song

 

 Is it a voice that I hear

Or a legend that rains

All over the land?

 

 Mmanwu, of distant vision

Trapped in a house of mirrors

Image-on-Image

 

 Is it a sight that I behold

Or a text

Afloat on the magic of the mirrors?

 

 Out of the depths he comes,

Ancestor and god the word

Rising onto the future of the past

 

 

 A word for the last word

 

 The word, the last word

The last hope that Chukwu will begin

Again from speech

 

 The word only the word

Rises from the grave new world

The word only

 

 The word only the word

Forever, after all noises

The word forever

 

 The word forever the hope

That Chukwu will not perish

With the future

 

 

 Wars and Rumours of Wars

 

 Wars and rumours of wars

If Warsaw ever saw war

Not like the fury of the sound of this fury

Cracking, crashing, crushing old unities

Now, and death marches on

 

 And death marches on between brothers

Hooting with the Hutus

Toothing with the Tutsis

Here and there, a call to grief

 

 Aguleri once ate with Umuleri

Iran once ran with Iraq

But now death marches on

Reducing friends to fiends

 

 And death marches on against the rhyme

Of reason, against a coherent poem

Cancelling here, rewriting there

And death marches against history

Spreading wars, and rumours of wars.

 

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Obododimma Oha