an african ballad

1

When the world was born

And cloth with the crust of earth

Africa was carved out as a gun

That holds triumphant in the world map,

The rich agriculture of our fertile minds

When God gave us a spear-plough

To lead the savannah livestock and beasts

He did not give us a paddle to row

And now we are discoursed on the Niger sail

Having lost the road to our homes

But nature gave us a color of war

As radiant and coarse as the humus soil

Yet the rain beats the ground raw

And tears up the seed awaiting harvest,

This for Africa is my greatest regret

2

Take all the politics and technology away

Bring out the gong to the market square

Let this wild teaching not lead us astray

But let us be by the quarterly moon-light

And sing ourselves of tales past

Let us remember the yam festivals

Where we have traded with the tin gods

And brought out in the open our arch-rivals

Challenging them openly to a wrestling fight

Because our customs were so free

The children were not sleeping at the village-square

They were jollying in a mighty swell

Not with the robes of a squire

Or cloth in the splendor of modernization

But breast feeding a child needs the least civilization

3

Gently, river Niger is flowing to river Benue

There is more gold replenishing the gold coast

And the strong iroko tree shall never sway

To the bewildering winds of tribal adulteration

That civilization is blowing to our dialects

Slowly, the Nile River peacefully flows

The voltaic mountains of the highlands remain steady

And Sierra-lone is getting undone to what it was

For this ballad is healing the ageing wounds

Of a woman that had an abiku mound

Patiently, the bay of the red-sea remains still

As was written in the page of African folk-lore

Where we ate unabashed with fingers every meal

Unashamed that a spoon is newest technology

That civilization claims is cleaner than our hands

4

Let us remember the lonely canoe-man

Whose vocation is cruder than oil

As this gift flows in his linage, and clan

Of loading his net with mackerel fishes

That he skillfully swoops from the waters

Then as he threads on the untarred road

With his rich harvest hung upon his back

As an African war horse to carry any load

Such strength are bestowed on only hard-workers

Whose toil shall be traded for thrones in paradise

Then his children run to embrace him

And his wife is off to commandeer the fire-wood

Then in the darkness, there that seems dim

Still is the light of the bats and owl

That turns every ray of darkness into vision

5

As the cocks cry awakes the suns eye

Africa slouches awake to its triumphant call

That the first dew has dropped from on high

And the farmer must tarry to till the lands

With his black, coarse, and cultivating hands

Then the town-crier uses his message samba

To highlight the villagers of moonlight meeting

But this is a painful thing to remember

That now our village squares has been turned to schools`

Yet it’s delightful to swim in the light of education

Then under those stars an African legend is born

An African tale starts from the night

For then, when the darkness is worn

We used to be united at the village squares

But people have come to desolate those squares

6

Yet Africa must never die in our fading eyes

It must never be washed away from the earth

As Sodom and Gomorrah of the modern ages

That sunk to the soil for political injustice,

Which blots the spell of the sun to reign

Africa can go to the days of trading cowries

Or commence with the age of superior civilization

Where we pay high amount as dowries

By swindling the brides family by technology

That has eaten deep into the ordinary heart beat

Africa! I summon you from where you are buried

For men have died singing you to wake

Yet you remain withered and barren

But at the sound of your moaning children heed

And awake to sleep nevermore again

7

Africa you have left the lips of your babes undone

And left their lips torn by harmatan and weather

So that other continents have fed us rum

And we have let the bile through our mouths

Because you have ceased to cater for our needs

Africa you have been aborted of your offspring

By the woeful blade of ancestral colonialism

And now our daughters have married foreign rings

With their long bridal attire, and clumsy gloves

That makes them feel joint with the foreigner

But i remember a smooth African weeding

Where the goats and sheep are the bride price

And the palm-wine does most of the talking

Then the bride serves the linage of the groom

Dressed with the cultural beads that adorn her beauty

8

They have sucked the juice and thrown the orange away

For the rotting remains to cater for its woes

But the coconut water replenishes daily

And the scrape of debris that our earth is left

Is turning now into the fertility of the savannah greenery

Then to every child that has tasted Africa’s breasts

As her malnutrition’d milk has been supplemented

By the multiplication power of the boiling rice

For there to come a possibility out of nothing

And fresh spring waters from still rocks

To every distorted land conflicted by war

That is one of the tribes of Africa’s rivulets

Let there be combatant blood-shed no more

And let the innocent ones that have died

Bless the guilty ones still fighting the war

9

They that raped you call you a harlot

And those that maimed you call you a savage

But who nature has blessed should be harmed not

For he who points fingers at the accused

Is living in more guilt than his holy fingers

It is true that you are naked and wretched

But the wretchedness is all the hope we need

And by the times our aspirations are well aged

There across that landscape, over that horizon

We must have achieved our aim towards the sunset

Conceiving mother of the new age

Who is pregnant with the foetus of fulfillment

And though civilization is a bitter stage

Our feet is bent more than a horses hoof

To step at the tropics of receding growth