Page 31 of Collected Poems

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of straw caught a flame blown

from overnight logs by harmattan's

incendiary breath. Defying his age and

sickness he rose and steered himself

smoke-blind to safety.

A nimble rat appeared at the

door of his hole looked quickly to left and

right and scurried across the floor

to nearby farmlands.

Even roaches that grim

tenantry that nothing discourages

fled their crevices that day on wings they

only use in deadly haste.

ousehold gods alone

frozen in ritual black with blood

of endless tribute festooned in feathers

perished in the blazing pyre

of that hut.

Those Gods Are Children

(for Gabriel Okara)

No man who loves himself

will dare to drink

before his fathers' presences enshrined

by the threshold have drunk

their fill. A fool alone will

contest the precedence of ancestors

and gods; the wise wisely

sing them grandiloquent lullabies

knowing they are children

those omnipotent deities.

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