For Kole Omotosho, who just died today @ 80
By Chris Anyokwu
He spoke
Just before dawn
Of a people snailing rapidly towards night
Of mystical beasts
Ripping the heart
Out of the soul
Of a corralled contraption.
He’d sought to wrestle
To earth vampires of rift
And nail the iniquities of class to common lintels.
Cape to Cairo
He traversed haranguing
Vendors of common hate. Ambidextrous, nimble of tongue,
He rose at dawn
Facing the East
Bringing the infinitudes
of Oriental splendor.
Savant of truth
Aesthete extraordinaire,
Kole collected sundry
Nectars from petars
In bloom across the sable world.
But time, friend and foe
Alike stole in gnarling
The stout Iroko
To willowy fern, drifting
Towards the westering horizon in paling hues
Until…silence.
Prisoner like all,
Your walls crumbled
Flakes before the fated ferry, and, dropping robes
Of flesh, you have soared
Beyond time.
@ Chris Anyokwu
Professor of English, UNILAG
