80 Hearty Cheers!!!

EVENSONG by Niran Okewole
(For W.S)

The heavy hand of night falls lightly,
lightly upon Sisyphus.

It is a dog slain at the altar,
the deity has no taste for lamb.
The wine of the Eucharist is white,
three days to distill the riddle of the palm.

Twilight becomes the trader, after the
last wares are sold and the
last oil lamps doused and the
mother heads home, bag full of wosi-wosi.
Night time, on Samarkand road.

Ake evenings beget other evenings- Cairo airport,
Castro’s Cuba, Oshogbo, down and out in Paris with
the Guatemalans, a cell, awaiting trial
for wild-west-gun-radio-justice. Cryptoshuttling.
Night, and the refugee from king Baabu border-
hops on a motor bike. Under a black moon
the worshippers sing the song of the
Not-I bird,
trading for organ preludes the rhythm of ancestral
drums.

The love of night liberates the world from darkness

______

Niran Okewole is a psychiatrist and poet. He generously slaughtered a dog in this poem for the occasion of WS’s 80th birthday.