CONFESSIONS

Do you think you can dim my sun?
Do you think id turn and run?
You must be mad even to think
That you can halt the flow of my ink

A poet rises above all things
Above craving decrees and acts of kings
As a typhoon towers above the city
of Ignorance so we thrive on poesy

What we do not say is not there
But what is there we can not fear
We always tell the beauty of a rose
Though it may set Society in throes

For our verse is the crux of all art
Tis to be true to our own heart
We break convention to be true
And make society drink of our brew

A girl lives forever upon a Grecian ode
While tyrants die "Upon A Famished Road"¹
Love alone is eternal and so are we
For verse is the potion of longevity

I can do what I will, what I choose
Make a moment forever by my Muse
So everything is fair and the world is green
And every country side girl becomes a queen

Crumbling Zaria² walls become forts of love
For it is in love that we make our grove
Poetry is the beautiful things unseen
Life is what should never have been

My song is airy, my voice is light
Singing sweet songs by the moonlight
My sonnets scale fences, taint the hate
So we love together in blissful fate

If you envy my freedom and want of it
Come and ill teach rhythm to your feet
So the rhyme of sound, ocean and river
Shall course through your blood forever

Come and ill show you a lass to love
And at once you're young again, like a dove
The Forever song on your lips, for the drum
Of treacherous harmattan shan't beat or come

But if you wish to deprive me of it
Then prepare your sword, we shall meet
And fight to the death for this bliss
Shall live me only with deaths bitter kiss

As I thrive in love, so now in these wars
Ill defend my Art by means of force
And when your hate and envy is done
These words shall upon your casket be borne

"Did you think you could dim my sun
Did you think id turn and run
Tis my Destiny 'fore I was born
And my verse will outlive me when am gone"

© 2004 Richard Ugbede Ali

1. Title of an anthology of poems by a Nigerian poet, Tanure Ojaide
2. The name of a town in Northern Nigeria.